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Arrogance, Expectations & Inspiration - Personal Q&A with my Brother · Ali & Taimur Abdaal

2019-11-14 · Q&A video · Ali, Taimur Abdaal · recording, 24:28 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Relationships and personal life (also: Work and career, Mindset, motivation and happiness, YouTube, writing online and creators, Learning and studying) · mode: Answering questions · tags: Family, His medical past

In a personal Q&A, Ali and his brother Taimur talk about growing up and each other: Ali tied his identity to staying first in his year after the 11-plus, Taimur feels implicitly devalued as a non-medic in a family of doctors and suspects Ali is inwardly arrogant, and Ali answers that confidence, unlike arrogance, is not relative.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: the earlier life-advice Q&A and where to find more value

00:01:08 — Introducing Taimur: maths at Oxford, Nested, his spreadsheet-modelling startup

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur studied maths at University College, Oxford, graduated a couple of years ago, worked a year as a data scientist at the London property startup Nested, and has run his own startup with a friend for a few months. — 00:01:20 · Taimur Abdaal, London, University of Oxford
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur's startup is building a new kind of modelling tool for spreadsheet users: spreadsheets have barely changed in decades but are so flexible that people use them for everything, and modelling is a really valuable use. — 00:01:42 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says that just as Airtable turned the data-storage use of a spreadsheet into its own product, his startup is doing the same for modelling. — 00:02:11 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says nothing fundamental made him study maths and Ali medicine: Ali probably once considered something like maths, Taimur wanted to be a vet for most of his life, and the choices were interchangeable. — 00:02:40 · Taimur Abdaal

00:02:53 — Similarities and differences; life advice

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says he really does not like life advice. — 00:03:27 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali calls himself a big sucker for life advice and thinks Taimur is wrong to dislike it; the brothers have discussed the issue at length on their podcast Not Overthinking. — 00:03:27 · Taimur Abdaal, Not Overthinking

00:04:11 — Fights and disagreements

00:04:50 — What inspires them about each other

  • ★★★ Ali says he reads ideas on the internet and in books and podcasts and repackages them with his own spin, while Taimur observes the world and asks why it is that way, which inspires Ali to be a more original thinker. — 00:04:57 · Taimur Abdaal

    “I repackage up those ideas and kind of sell them with my own spin on them.”

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur finds it inspiring that Ali just gets things done, committing and following through, which Taimur says he is not good at, perhaps from being too caught up in trying to be original. — 00:05:26 · Taimur Abdaal

  • ★★★ In year seven Ali found he had ranked first in his year group in the 11-plus, the exam for grammar school, and for three years his whole aim was to stay number one in the year. — 00:05:55
  • ★★ Ali says the pressure to stay first was self-driven: his mother never told him he had to come first, but his whole identity was tied up in it. — 00:05:55

00:05:56 — Academic pressure growing up: ranking first in the 11-plus

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says that because Ali tied his identity to being first, Taimur in turn tied his own identity to not being worse than Ali academically. — 00:06:33 · Taimur Abdaal

00:06:53 — Taimur's Instagram captions and birthday-wish format

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur keeps one fixed format for Instagram captions and for Facebook birthday wishes so that he does no thinking, and sees nothing inauthentic in intentionally sticking to a format. — 00:07:00 · Taimur Abdaal, Instagram, Facebook
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur's Instagram captions are a single word or phrase describing the picture, because thinking more would get him caught up in what he is signalling and whether he is being authentic. — 00:07:34 · Taimur Abdaal, Instagram

00:08:14 — How the podcast and the YouTube channel have changed their lives

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur finds the podcast Not Overthinking really useful for his own thinking: topics that come up with friends are often ones the brothers have discussed on it, so his thoughts are already worked out. — 00:08:34 · Taimur Abdaal, Not Overthinking
  • ★★ Ali says his YouTube channel has affected his life massively: he is occasionally recognised in the street, a sort of "F-list celebrity" whom people who have seen the videos meet with a positive image. — 00:08:34 · YouTube

00:09:20 — Taimur's username refrigerated

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur's username "refrigerated" dates from age 13: binge-watching Naruto, he saw a chat user called "desk lamp" and chose an object of his own, "refrigerator", or "refrigerated" when that is taken. — 00:09:51 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: What Taimur enjoyed least at Oxford was his own attitude to studying: he went in not caring about academics, meaning to coast and scrape through, which he calls silly; otherwise he would have enjoyed it more and got more out of it. — 00:10:16 · Taimur Abdaal, University of Oxford

00:10:22 — Best and worst things about Oxford and Cambridge

  • ★★ At Cambridge Ali liked the people, the location and the college system's ready-made network of friends, and was very involved in the Pakistan Society and the Islamic Society; lectures were sometimes boring. — 00:10:55 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge

00:11:29 — Being proud of each other: Taimur's Twitter thread on "I'm proud of you"

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: In a Twitter thread asking what "I'm proud of you" means, Taimur says he has said it a couple of times as a canned phrase when someone accomplished something, but meant that he was happy for them. — 00:12:22 · Taimur Abdaal, Twitter
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Among the replies to his thread, Taimur reads one saying "I'm proud of you" partly means "I'm happy that you're happy" but adds recognition that the person had to overcome something to reach that happiness. — 00:12:22 · Taimur Abdaal, Twitter
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur does not think Ali outwardly brags about his accomplishments, but suspects he is inwardly quite arrogant. (hedged) — 00:13:31 · Taimur Abdaal

00:13:39 — Does Ali brag: arrogance and confidence

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur links his suspicion to Ali's talk of diversifying his identity: being so open about drawing self-esteem from many things implies, he says, that Ali thinks his success in various areas means a lot. — 00:14:01 · Taimur Abdaal

  • ★★★ Ali defines the difference: confidence is knowing you are a big deal, arrogance knowing you are better than others; arrogance compares you with others by accomplishments, while confidence is not relative but being secure in yourself. — 00:14:34

    “confidence is kind of knowing that you're a big deal. Arrogance is knowing that you're better than others.”

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says that focusing on external achievement as the driver of confidence does not sit well with him. (hedged) — 00:15:18 · Taimur Abdaal

00:15:53 — Comparison between siblings

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says people comparing siblings is one of his least favourite things; when he meets siblings or a small group, he makes a conscious effort to see them as their own people. — 00:15:57 · Taimur Abdaal

00:16:37 — The most annoying thing about having a doctor brother

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says their mother, many people in their local Asian community and much of their family are doctors, so growing up they were fed the narrative that being a doctor is the best thing. — 00:16:42 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says that, as the non-medic among doctors, he implicitly does not feel valued: many people around him do not really get what he does and cares about, though nobody says so. — 00:18:00 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: At family gatherings, Taimur says, relatives congratulate Ali on becoming a doctor and graduating from Cambridge, then ask Taimur what he is up to nowadays. — 00:18:26 · Taimur Abdaal, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says people from similar backgrounds who did not study medicine are often assumed not to have got into it. — 00:18:26 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ The Not Overthinking podcast episodes are not scripted: the brothers try to think of topics ahead of time. — 00:19:23 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal

00:19:28 — Podcast preparation and topics

00:20:02 — Hobbies, favourite films and series

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur dislikes the question about hobbies: it assumes people's time fits known categories, such as playing the piano, while less standard pursuits, like browsing forums or vaguely reading about web design, are hard to package. — 00:20:37 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur counts his work building a tech company to do with statistics and spreadsheets as sort of a hobby; he is learning the piano and wants to get back into badminton and fishkeeping. — 00:21:24 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali's hobbies are guitar, singing and piano, which he is trying to improve at, squash and badminton, and making videos on the side. — 00:21:53
  • ★ Ali's favourite film is still probably The Dark Knight. (hedged) — 00:21:53

00:22:33 — Taimur's blog

  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: Taimur says his current lifestyle has thrown his blog-writing routine out of whack, but he is getting back into it. — 00:22:43 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Taimur Abdaal: On his blog Taimur now writes more personal thoughts, introspection done publicly. — 00:23:07 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali and Taimur worked together on BMAT Ninja, online learning platforms for the BMAT and UKCAT medical school exams. — 00:23:07 · Taimur Abdaal, BMAT, UKCAT

00:23:26 — Shared projects: BMAT Ninja and World of Warcraft; sign-off

Threads in this video

  • refine · How do you make the most of university? — What Taimur enjoyed least at Oxford was his own attitude to studying: he went in not caring about academics, meaning to coast and scrape through, which he calls silly; otherwise he would have enjoyed it more and got more out of it. (00:10:16)

Mentioned

Central: Taimur Abdaal

Also: People: Matt D'Avella · Peter McKinnon

Projects: BMAT Ninja (website) · Not Overthinking

Works: 11-plus · BMAT · Game of Thrones · Naruto · Spider-Man: Far From Home · The Dark Knight · UKCAT

Organizations: Airtable · Cambridge University Islamic Society · Cambridge University Pakistan Society · Facebook · Instagram · Nested · Twitter · University College, Oxford · University of Cambridge · University of Oxford · YouTube

Places: Cambridge · London · Pakistan

Products: Microsoft Excel · World of Warcraft

Only in the description or credits: Causal

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