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Monthly Favourites #4 - Ali Abdaal

2018-05-14 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 12:04 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Medicine and his doctor years, YouTube, writing online and creators, Health, sleep and habits, Books and reading) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, He changed his mind

In his fourth Monthly Favourites (April 2018), Ali, who has just passed his Cambridge medical finals and starts as a doctor on 23 July, recommends the Revue newsletter service and argues that an audience holding you accountable builds habits; CGP Grey's videos changed his mind about death, and his Kindle is what keeps him reading and sleeping well.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Fourth monthly favourites; life update: final exams passed, starting work as a doctor in Cambridge on 23 July

  • ★★ Ali posts the fourth instalment of his Monthly Favourites series, in which he talks each month about the books, articles, podcasts and other things he discovered, this time for April 2018. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Ali learned a couple of days before the video that he passed his final-year exams at Cambridge, so he is pretty much officially a doctor. — 00:00:00 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali has submitted his provisional registration to the General Medical Council and, barring calamity, expects to start working as a doctor in Cambridge from 23 July 2018. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali looks forward to vlogging his life as a junior doctor as it goes along. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ About five weeks before the video Ali started using Revue to set up a weekly email newsletter, which he sends out every Sunday morning. — 00:00:29 · Sunday Snippets

00:00:40 — This month's list; Revue, the email newsletter service behind his weekly newsletter

  • ★★ Ali recommends Revue as an email newsletter service because it gets out of the way and lets you focus on the writing; he has used many others, such as Mailchimp, while running SixMed. — 00:01:14 · Mailchimp, 6med
  • ★★ Ali says Revue suits a personal newsletter: links are easy to add, it builds a profile page with all past issues, and its fixed design spares him worrying whether his newsletter looks good enough. — 00:01:51

00:02:21 — Writing to 650 readers each week keeps him writing; accountability as a way to build habits

  • ★★ Ali has long had a personal blog on his website but writes a post maybe once every few months at best and has yet to get into the habit of writing consistently. — 00:02:21 · aliabdaal.com
  • ★★ Ali says consistency is the key to any form of success in almost any sphere. (overstated) — 00:02:21
  • ★★ Ali's weekly email newsletter goes to about 650 people, a number he calls ridiculously large. — 00:03:01 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★★ Knowing he will email 650 people every week motivates Ali to write each week; wanting it to be good makes him research more, builds his writing habit and makes him more reflective about what he reads and thinks. — 00:03:01 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★★ Ali says having someone, such as friends, family or teachers, hold you to account for something you want to do anyway is a really good way to build a habit. — 00:03:44
  • ★★ Ali describes CGP Grey as a YouTube channel of thought-provoking explainer videos with well-made animations and interesting stories, a good way to learn about many interesting things. — 00:04:14

00:04:30 — CGP Grey's videos about death change his mind; longevity and good health

  • ★★ In the past Ali always thought death was a good thing: it is needed to control the population, without it people would get bored, and nothing they do would have significance. — 00:05:03
  • ★★★ CGP Grey's videos on death genuinely changed Ali's mind: he no longer thinks death is a required part of life. — 00:05:26
  • ★★ Videos on life-prolonging treatments and longevity research made Ali value maximising time in good health, so he now pays much more attention to exercise, posture, stretching and eating well. — 00:05:52
  • ★★ Seeing death as a curable evil, rather than an inevitable thing people tell themselves is good, has firmed up Ali's view on good health. — 00:06:19
  • ★ Ali has been experimenting a little with veganism, which has not really worked so far. — 00:06:19

00:06:49 — Avengers: Infinity War and his love of superhero films

  • ★★ Ali highly recommends CGP Grey's YouTube channel and his videos about death, for anyone interested in death or not. — 00:06:49
  • ★★ Ali calls Avengers: Infinity War an incredible film that he absolutely loved, and says he loves anything Marvel. — 00:06:49
  • ★ Although people say Batman v Superman was bad, Ali quite enjoyed it and thinks it was pretty solid. — 00:06:49
  • ★ Ali thinks superhero films and romantic films are the best genres, and a film combining the two is his dream combination. — 00:07:29

00:07:53 — The Kindle: bedtime reading, sleep, highlights and instant access to books

  • ★★ Ali says the Kindle has done more than anything else in his life to improve his reading and his appreciation of the world. (overstated) — 00:07:53 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali came across little new material in April 2018 because he had left his Kindle at his family home in St Albans for about two months while revising. — 00:07:53 · Kindle, St Albans
  • ★★ Ali's bedtime routine: lights off, he reads on his Kindle Paperwhite at its lowest brightness until he feels really tired, then drops it on the floor and falls asleep. — 00:08:37 · Kindle
  • ★★★ Without his Kindle Ali found falling asleep a waste of time, lying in bed for half an hour thinking; with it back he sleeps much better, reading until his eyes start to close. — 00:08:59 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali recommends the Kindle's highlighting feature: revisiting your highlights is a good way to take more from a book than reading it once. — 00:08:59 · Kindle
  • ★★★ Ali says the Kindle changed his relationship with life: he can get almost any book within seconds of hearing about it, so a book a friend recommends is bought on Amazon at once and read within the week. — 00:09:28 · Kindle

00:10:00 — The series is about consistency: a monthly video whether or not he has much to say

  • ★★ Ali says the Monthly Favourites series is about consistency: he has committed to a video each month whether or not he has much to say, which makes him think harder about what he enjoys and whether it gives him value. — 00:10:00

00:10:33 — Coming videos, a possible 20k-subscriber Q&A, newsletter, Twitter and Facebook page; sign-off

  • ★★ Ali says his next few videos will be more vlogs and study-with-me videos, along with some travel vlogs. — 00:10:33
  • ★★ Ali might at some point do a 20,000-subscriber Q&A and asks viewers to send questions in the comments, by Instagram message or by email. (hedged) — 00:10:33
  • ★ Ali has recently set up a Facebook fan page, saying it makes him feel like a proper narcissist, and plans to post videos and maybe live content there. — 00:11:02

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Kindle · Sunday Snippets

Also: 6med · aliabdaal.com · Cambridge · Mailchimp · St Albans · University of Cambridge

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