Skip to content

Life Advice - 50k subs Q&A

2018-08-03 · Q&A video · Ali · recording, 22:17 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Productivity and time, Learning and studying, Work and career) · mode: Answering questions · tags: Aimed at students, Lesson from a book, His own products discussed, His medical past

In the life-advice part of his 50,000-subscriber Q&A, recorded after his first day as a junior doctor, Ali answers with stoicism (bad feelings come from the story we tell about events), low expectations, directed study goals and not caring what others think, and tells an aspiring doctor to be the only rather than the best by learning skills such as web design.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — First day as a junior doctor; 50,000 subscribers and about 120 questions sorted by theme

  • ★★ Ali, now a junior doctor in the UK, records this video on the evening of his very first day on the job, exhausted. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali's channel has recently hit 50,000 subscribers; viewers sent about 120 questions by Instagram message, which he sorts by theme into separate Q&A videos, starting with life advice. — 00:00:00 · Instagram

  • ★★★ Ali says you are, for the most part, fully in control of your own time: he never says "I don't have time" and reframes the thought as "I am choosing not to make the time". — 00:00:30

    “I am choosing not to make the time for whatever”

00:00:41 — Time management: "I don't have time", spaced repetition for hobbies, a priority list with studying as the basic attack

  • ★★ Ali applies spaced repetition to any hobby, such as piano, guitar, singing or skateboarding: ten minutes one day, twenty the next, another twenty a few days later. — 00:01:08 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ali says that applying patience and consistency across different areas of life makes you pretty good at many things after about a year, so people start asking how you do so much. — 00:01:50
  • ★★ To balance everything, Ali keeps a priority list; in his own, studies were always at the bottom, below everything else he had to do or wanted to do. — 00:01:50
  • ★★ Like the basic attack in a role-playing game such as World of Warcraft, used when no other move is available, studying was Ali's default whenever nothing else was going on, so he always had something to do. — 00:02:48 · World of Warcraft

00:02:55 — Coping with stress: stoicism, the story we tell ourselves, the serenity prayer

  • ★★ Ali says he can count on one hand the times he has felt stressed, partly because he likes the philosophy of stoicism. — 00:03:16 · stoicism
  • ★★ On stoicism Ali always recommends Derren Brown's book Happy, and also William Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life, whose title he half-remembers. — 00:03:16 · Derren Brown, stoicism
  • ★★★ Ali's first principle of stoicism: external events do not directly cause a negative emotion; our response to them, the story we tell ourselves about them, does. — 00:03:40 · stoicism
  • ★★★ Facing a lot to do, Ali reframes "I have so much to do and no time" as "it is what it is, I'm going to do these things", so feeling bad about the work, which he takes to be stress, never comes in. — 00:04:10 · stoicism
  • ★★★ Ali's second principle is the serenity prayer, which he calls the ultimate way of living: most things lie outside our control except our own actions and, arguably, our own thoughts. — 00:04:10 · stoicism
  • ★★ Since he controls only his own thoughts and actions, Ali says nothing else needs to concern him; stressed friends tend to worry about what they cannot control, and worrying only about your own thoughts and actions makes for a stress-free life. — 00:04:55 · stoicism

00:05:35 — Bad days and failures: low expectations, the BMAT course, changing the story

  • ★★★ After working hard on something, Ali tries not to let the outcome affect his emotional state, which he calls a form of pessimism: having very low expectations. — 00:05:37
  • ★★★ Ali has recently released an online BMAT video course, a series of more than 70 videos he spent about three or four days making. — 00:05:37 · BMAT
  • ★★ Despite the work, Ali expects only that maybe three or four people buy his BMAT course and he makes a bit of money on the side, a deliberately low bar. — 00:06:16 · BMAT
  • ★★ Ali says whether anyone buys his BMAT course is completely outside his control; what is in his control are his own thoughts and actions, such as putting effort into it. — 00:06:43 · BMAT
  • ★★ Ali says he really cannot remember the last time he had a bad day. — 00:07:13
  • ★★ When a consultant shouts at a junior doctor over the phone about a bad request, Ali says one person takes it as a lesson, with a growth mindset, while another feels a failure and has a bad day. — 00:08:03 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ali says that if something majorly bad happens in your life, it is fine to have a bad day. — 00:08:32
  • ★★★ To have fewer bad days, Ali holds that the event is not what makes him feel bad but his story about it, so to stop feeling bad he only has to change his story. — 00:08:32 · stoicism

00:08:56 — Learning from mistakes: defining success, scoping the subject, directed goals

  • ★★ Ali says to define success for yourself: a first-class degree or coming top of the year is not the be-all and end-all it may first seem. — 00:08:59
  • ★★ Ali was stressed about his exam results in year seven and now cannot see why; asking whether something will matter in ten years' time is, he says, alone a way to not feel bad about many things. — 00:09:28
  • ★★ Ali calls spaced repetition and active recall by far the most efficient revision techniques. — 00:09:57 · spaced repetition, active recall
  • ★★ Ali advises scoping your subject, as Paul would say: break a big subject into manageable topics; A-level chemistry is only 15 topics, so one a day covers the syllabus every two weeks. — 00:09:57 · scoping the subject
  • ★★★ Ali says "do some chemistry" is a poor study goal because it overwhelms and gives no place to start; "go over my active recall questions for chapter five" is an easy, directed goal. — 00:10:26 · active recall

00:11:16 — What changed at university: not caring what people think, confidence and identity

  • ★★★ Ali says his greatest change at university is getting better at not caring what people think, which starting a YouTube channel, bringing a camera to lectures and vlogging in public required. — 00:11:18 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says most people just don't care: of the 200 in his medical school year, maybe three or four gave a second thought to his camera, because everyone is busy with their own lives and no one spends time thinking about you. — 00:11:46
  • ★★ Ali's confidence grew at university through making videos, joining many societies, taking part in different sports and trying new things. — 00:12:14
  • ★★ At school Ali was not a very confident person, because his identity was wrapped up in being really academic and he had little else going for him. — 00:12:14
  • ★★★ Ali says he gained confidence by separating his self-esteem from academics and tying his identity to a vast number of things, because he likes being pretty good at many things rather than really good at a few. — 00:13:05
  • ★ Ali says he may make a video at some point about confidence and what his identity depends on. (hedged) — 00:13:05 · first in: 2018-06-12, Live Stream - Tuesday Evening Hangout
  • ★★ Ali calls The Tim Ferriss Show one of his favourite podcasts of all time, incredible for learning to become a more accomplished person; Tim Ferriss asks guests what they would tell themselves ten years ago. — 00:13:49 · The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss

00:13:51 — Advice to his younger self: be nicer to people

  • ★★ Like many of Tim Ferriss's guests, Ali would give his younger self no advice to change course, since he is where he is because of what he did when younger. — 00:14:21 · Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Ali would tell his younger self to be a little nicer to people, since kindness goes a long way; when young he took pride in being arrogant, sometimes rude, even thinking others beneath him. — 00:14:44

00:15:20 — Favourite quotes: the serenity prayer, Eleanor Roosevelt, "screw motivation, what you need is discipline"

  • ★★ Ali collects quotes; besides the serenity prayer, a favourite is one often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: you will stop caring what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do. — 00:15:22 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ali returns many times a year to the article "Screw motivation, what you need is discipline": not feeling like doing something does not mean you can't do it. — 00:15:52
  • ★★ Home from a long day, Ali could not be bothered to make this video but made it anyway: not feeling like doing something is not a good enough reason not to, especially when the long-term purpose is good. — 00:16:21
  • ★ Ali finds making and editing his videos fun and knows they may help some viewers, so he benefits overall even when he does not feel like starting. — 00:16:50
  • ★★ Ali has been reading many books on Kindle for five years and religiously highlights the interesting lines. — 00:16:50 · Kindle
  • ★ Ali might make a series of videos on his favourite quotes from the books he has highlighted on Kindle, and asks viewers whether they would like it. (hedged) — 00:17:19 · Kindle
  • ★★★ To an aspiring doctor starting college, Ali's best piece of advice is to try to make yourself different. — 00:17:19

00:17:38 — Advice for an aspiring doctor: make yourself different, skills that compound

  • ★★★ Ali likes a line from a book, "it's better to be the only rather than the best": combine different things to carve out your own niche, in medicine, law, economics, programming or YouTube. — 00:18:09

    “it's better to be the only rather than the best.”

  • ★★ Ali says trying to be the best, traditionally the best grades and the most competitive jobs, is a stressful way of living, constantly competing against other people. — 00:18:42

  • ★★★ What Ali is most glad he ever did is teaching himself web design and coding: even within medicine they opened far more doors than his good school grades and fairly average university grades, as did making presentations look pretty in PowerPoint. — 00:19:04 · Microsoft PowerPoint
  • ★★ Ali advises doing sports because you enjoy them, not because they will get you into university. — 00:19:53
  • ★★★ At any stage of life Ali advises picking up skills that compound with your main line, such as public speaking, photography, design and video editing. — 00:19:53
  • ★★ Ali says someone who just wants to be a doctor does not need his advice: the path is set out, so get good grades, be nice to your patients and you will be a pretty great doctor. — 00:20:15
  • ★★★ For an aspiring doctor who wants something different, Ali's biggest advice is to work on extra things that feed into a medical career, thinking ten or twenty years ahead; he never guessed how much making websites would help him in medicine. — 00:20:39
  • ★★ Beyond that, Ali advises enjoying yourself, not working too hard, doing what you enjoy and what is worthwhile, and reading a lot. — 00:21:08

00:21:24 — Closing: the format, the next part on personal questions, sign-off

  • ★★ The next part of Ali's 50,000-subscriber Q&A will answer personal questions, such as about his girlfriend and his goals in life. — 00:21:53

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: stoicism

Also: People: Derren Brown · Eleanor Roosevelt · Tim Ferriss · William Irvine

Works: A Guide to the Good Life · BMAT · Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine · Screw motivation, what you need is discipline · The Tim Ferriss Show

Organizations: Instagram · YouTube

Concepts: active recall · discipline · growth mindset · scoping the subject · spaced repetition

Products: Kindle · Microsoft PowerPoint · World of Warcraft

Replied to by

← Previous: A year on YouTube - Channel / life update · Next → James Arthur - "Say You Won't Let Go" · Acoustic cover ft. Matticus Vlogs