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Monthly Favourites #7 - Ali Abdaal

2019-03-30 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 12:50 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Learning and studying, Books and reading, Health, sleep and habits, YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: Review and recommendation · tags: Lesson from a book, Family

In the revived Monthly Favourites series for March 2019, Ali recommends The Courage to Be Disliked, his brother Taimur's blog post on learning by exploration before theory, Tim Ferriss's interview with Neil Gaiman, and cooking with the oven, and widens the series to things he has rediscovered.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Revival of the Monthly Favourites series: a book, a blog post, a podcast episode and a physical product

  • ★★ Ali revives his Monthly Favourites series and commits to a video every month on interesting things he has discovered or rediscovered that month. — 00:00:00

00:00:28 — The Courage to Be Disliked: Alfred Adler's theories as a dialogue between a philosopher and a youth over five nights

  • ★★★ Ali recommends The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga: its subtitle sounds corny and self-helpy, but the book is really good. — 00:00:28
  • ★★ Ali finds Alfred Adler, whose theories The Courage to Be Disliked uses, pretty cool and his theories pretty legit. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ The Courage to Be Disliked is written as a dialogue: a hot-headed youth visits a philosopher and, over five sessions, argues that life is hard while the philosopher reframes his problems. — 00:01:38
  • ★★ Ichiro Kishimi (quoted): The first night of The Courage to Be Disliked denies trauma: our current problems are not caused by our past; we want the problem and use the past as a post hoc justification. — 00:02:56
  • ★★ Ichiro Kishimi (quoted): The second night of The Courage to Be Disliked argues that all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. — 00:03:25
  • ★★ Ichiro Kishimi (quoted): The third night of The Courage to Be Disliked, "discard other people's tasks", holds that how other people think about you is their responsibility, so you need not worry about it. — 00:03:25
  • ★★ Ali says The Courage to Be Disliked did not really change his worldview, because having read a lot about stoicism he was already fairly sympathetic to the philosopher's view. — 00:03:55 · stoicism
  • ★ Ali finds The Courage to Be Disliked not at all like the classic self-help books he tends to read and enjoy. — 00:03:55
  • ★ Ali read The Courage to Be Disliked on his Kindle rather than as a physical book. — 00:03:55 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali gives away his physical copy of The Courage to Be Disliked: viewers who leave a comment with their Instagram username enter a random draw, and he will write something in the front and include some of his favourite highlights. — 00:04:43 · Instagram

00:05:11 — Taimur's blog post "Learn by exploration, then by theory" and learning the piano by ear

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal (quoted): In his blog post "Learn by exploration, then by theory", Ali's brother Taimur says that when learning you can take the theory up front or explore a little first and learn the theory later, and that exploring first is very satisfying. — 00:05:11 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali learned the piano by exploration, bashing out notes and playing by ear, and discovering music theory afterwards gave him a profound insight he thinks he would not have had by the traditional route. — 00:05:40
  • ★★★ Ali and his brother Taimur have just started a podcast, Not Overthinking, and have released two episodes. — 00:06:10 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal

00:06:28 — Ali and his brother have just started the podcast Not Overthinking

  • ★★ Not Overthinking, Ali and Taimur's podcast, releases an episode every Sunday morning; the two of them chat about happiness, creativity and the human condition. — 00:06:39 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal

00:07:06 — Neil Gaiman on The Tim Ferriss Show: his voice, writing rituals, Terry Pratchett and assisted suicide, Good Omens

  • ★★★ Ali calls Tim Ferriss's interview with Neil Gaiman, which he listened to while driving to IKEA with his mum, one of his favourite episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show, a podcast he has listened to for years. — 00:07:06 · The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Ali calls Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book really good and Stardust really incredible as a book and as an audiobook, and the Stardust film pretty sick as well. — 00:07:06
  • ★★ Ali finds Neil Gaiman's voice hypnotic and enchanting and tried to pick up tips for his own speaking from Gaiman's narration of The Graveyard Book and Stardust. — 00:07:34
  • ★★ Ali enjoys hearing which pens and notebooks top writers such as Neil Gaiman use, even though it makes no real difference and Stephen King would call an author's pen irrelevant. — 00:08:03
  • ★★ Ali says Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series and Neil Gaiman's friend, had a progressive dementia, knew he did not want to live once it advanced, and campaigned strongly for the right to die. — 00:08:03
  • ★★ Ali will watch Terry Pratchett's documentary on assisted suicide, a topic he cares about as a medic and on which he has made videos citing Pratchett's views. — 00:08:33
  • ★★ Good Omens, the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett soon released as a TV series, is now on Ali's to-read list, and he might discuss it in next month's (April 2019) Monthly Favourites video. (hedged) — 00:09:02
  • ★★ Ali has just discovered cooking with the oven: in six years at university and six months in his house he used it for little more than oven pizza and the odd roast chicken. — 00:09:25

00:09:37 — The oven, one-pan recipes and the cookbook Fit Men Cook

  • ★★ After baking salmon with vegetables in one tin, Ali wants to use the oven much more for meal prep and to live a healthier life. — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Ali recommends Kevin Curry's meal-prep cookbook Fit Men Cook, which uses the oven a lot; it is the first cookbook he has bought, as he is starting to get into cooking. — 00:11:05

00:11:15 — Why he makes Monthly Favourites and why it will include rediscovered things; sign-off

  • ★★ Rereading his Kindle highlights let Ali rediscover The Courage to Be Disliked months after reading it, which he calls one of the best things about Kindle highlights. — 00:11:30 · Kindle
  • ★★ Because when he made Monthly Favourites last year (2018) he often felt he had discovered little new, from now on Ali will also cover things he has rediscovered: books, videos, podcasts and articles that helped him develop, changed his view or entertained or inspired him. — 00:11:30

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Learn by Exploration, then by Theory · Neil Gaiman · The Courage to Be Disliked · The Tim Ferriss Show

Also: People: Alfred Adler · Ali Abdaal's mother · Fumitake Koga · Ichiro Kishimi · Kevin Curry · Stephen King · Taimur Abdaal · Terry Pratchett · Tim Ferriss

Projects: Not Overthinking

Works: American Gods · Discworld · Fit Men Cook · Good Omens · Stardust · The Graveyard Book

Organizations: IKEA · Instagram

Concepts: Assisted suicide · stoicism

Products: Kindle

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