My Annual Review using Notion

2019-12-27 (said on 2019-12-20 — implied: date said in the video; uploaded 7 days later) · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 17:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: Sponsor segment present, His own numbers, His own products discussed, Family, Lesson from a book

Ali walks through his 2019 annual review in Notion (experiences and people he is grateful for, accomplishments, discoveries, life lessons from his newsletter, plans for 2020 and a bucket list) and says he prefers systems and enjoying the process to numerical or SMART goals.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The annual review process and Notion as the operating system of his life

★★★ In his annual review Ali writes down the experiences and people he is grateful for, what he discovered that year, the lessons he learned and what to do better the following year; he highly recommends doing one. — 00:00:00
★★ Ali shares the Notion template he uses for his annual review, so that viewers can duplicate it and go through the process themselves. — 00:00:00 · Notion
★★ Ali calls his Notion notebook his "life OS": he uses Notion as the operating system for his life, with his daily highlights, weekly reviews and annual reviews in it. — 00:00:29 · Notion, daily highlight

00:00:57 — The review's categories, and Notion's toggles instead of Evernote

★★ Ali used to do his annual review in Evernote; he prefers Notion for it because its toggles keep the review from turning into one massive page. — 00:00:57 · Evernote, Notion

00:01:27 — Grateful for: experiences and people

★★ Ali adds a few notes to each entry of his annual review to jog his memory: the point of the review is also to look back, in five to ten years, on the annual reviews he has done since 2017 and see the trajectory of his life. — 00:01:27
★★ Among the 2019 experiences Ali is grateful for are recent trips to Japan and to Seville in Spain and the trip to Sudan in January, where the people were super nice and friendly. — 00:01:27 · Japan
★ Ali really enjoyed the teamwork on his general surgery placement and made friends there with his colleagues Komi, Joe and Antonia. — 00:01:57
★★ Ali lists his brother Taimur among the people he is grateful for in 2019, calling him a really good sounding board for ideas. — 00:02:27 · Taimur Abdaal
★★ Ali is grateful to his housemate Molly for "socializing by default", someone to talk to when he gets home from work, and for teaching him about feeling and expressing his emotions and communicating better. — 00:02:27 · Molly Hunt
★★★ The productivity YouTuber Thomas Frank gave Ali a lot of good advice a few months before and introduced him to Standard, the agency Ali is now part of. — 00:02:56 · Thomas Frank
★★★ Signing with the agency Standard changed the game for Ali on YouTube: he can now do sponsored videos pretty much whenever, and the extra money lets him hire people full time and scale the channel. — 00:03:25
★★ Ali has never met Simon Clark in real life, but Simon Clark was one of the two YouTubers who really inspired him to start his channel. — 00:03:25
★★ Peter McKinnon, the other big inspiration for Ali's channel, recently released a camera bag on Kickstarter, and Ali immediately spent $500 on it as a chance to give something back. — 00:03:55 · Peter McKinnon

00:04:24 — Accomplishments

★★★ Ali lists among his 2019 accomplishments YouTube growth, revenue growth, hiring a full-time team member and launching an online UKCAT course. — 00:04:24 · UKCAT, 6med
★★ Ali and his brother launched a podcast in 2019 and have kept it going for about 36 weeks with some consistency. — 00:04:24 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
★★ Ali's email newsletter grew from maybe 4,000 subscribers a year earlier to 18,000. (hedged) — 00:04:53 · Sunday Snippets
★★ Ali's Instagram account recently reached 50,000 followers. — 00:04:53 · Instagram
★★ Ali counts becoming a physiology supervisor at Girton College, Cambridge, among his accomplishments of 2019 and calls it really fun. — 00:04:53 · Girton College
★ Ali has been going to the gym semi-regularly for the last few weeks. — 00:04:53
★★ Ali says he has been taking finasteride against hair loss since about January 2019 and feels his hair has grown back a little. — 00:04:53

00:05:22 — Stuff he is grateful for, and three game changers

★★ Ali loves his desk setup: whenever his desk is clean he feels inspired to create things. — 00:05:22
★★ Ali keeps telling himself that his eight-year-old car is really quite nice, to talk himself out of wanting to buy a Tesla. — 00:05:51
★★ Other things Ali is grateful for in 2019: his flat, Philips Hue light bulbs, a notebook he enjoyed and the really comfortable Adidas Ultraboost shoes. — 00:05:51 · Philips Hue
★★★ About four to six months before, Ali started outsourcing the editing of his videos; it freed up so much of his time each week that he could go to the gym and try to eat more healthily. (hedged) — 00:06:21
★★★ Ali calls Notion a genuine game changer of 2019: he uses it for many things, and it is one of the few apps whose design has changed the way he thinks. — 00:06:21 · Notion
★ Notion sponsors the video; Ali says Notion was on his list of game changers before he knew the video would be sponsored. — 00:06:21 · Notion

00:07:02 — Stuff discovered this year

★★ Ali discovered Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time in 2019, a really good series of books he has been listening to on Audible. — 00:07:02 · The Wheel of Time, Audible
★★★ Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain, a workshop, online course and series of blog posts, has changed the way Ali thinks about content creation and note-taking. — 00:07:02 · Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte
★★★ Going to the gym while listening to Audible is much more fun for Ali now that he follows the Julian Method for building muscle; after StrongLifts, 5/3/1 and others, it is the method he has stuck to longest. — 00:07:31 · Audible
★★★ From The E-Myth, a book on growing a small business, Ali concludes that he made many mistakes in the early stages of his company SixMed by not delegating enough. — 00:07:31 · 6med
★★ Ali discovered the power of light lunches: a heavy lunch leaves him full and tired for the rest of the day, while a light lunch, at least for him, leaves him more energised. — 00:08:00
★★ Other discoveries of Ali's 2019: the Leuchtturm1917, a paper notebook he likes writing in by hand, and Bulletproof Radio, a podcast about biohacking. — 00:08:00 · Leuchtturm1917 notebook

00:08:29 — Life lessons from his email newsletter

★★ Every life lesson Ali finds valuable goes into his weekly email newsletter, which he sends every Sunday to 18,100 people as of the recording. — 00:08:29 · Sunday Snippets
★★ One of Ali's 2019 life lessons comes from Kurt Vonnegut: every now and then ask yourself "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is", a reminder to be grateful. — 00:08:59

“if this isn't nice, I don't know what is”
★★ Ali's daily highlight: every day you pick a single thing to focus on, which becomes your highlight of the day; he is working on a video about it. — 00:08:59 · daily highlight
★★ Ali's other 2019 life lessons include window openers versus door knockers, from a podcast; "obvious to you, amazing to others", from a Derek Sivers blog post; the flywheel, from what he thinks was a Jim Collins interview on The Tim Ferriss Show; and master boring fundamentals. (hedged) — 00:08:59 · Derek Sivers, The Tim Ferriss Show
★★★ In an annual review you can note down the lessons you learned that year, which are nice to look back on: Ali's lesson of 2017, he thinks, was the power of consistency, which has helped grow everything he has tried to do. (hedged) — 00:09:34

00:10:03 — Stuff to work on next year: life, medicine and side hustles

★★ For 2020 Ali wants to get more consistent at going to the gym, which he thinks much more possible now that he does not have to edit a lot of his videos himself. — 00:10:03
★★ Ali wants to get into cooking: he rarely cooks, and more often eats at work, gets a McDonald's drive-thru on the way home or orders a Deliveroo takeaway. — 00:10:03
★★ Ali wants to get better at telling stories, a general social skill he discovered in Tynan's book Superhuman Social Skills, which he calls really good. — 00:10:03
★★ Ali, who turns 26 in 2020, wants to make more of an effort with dating and meeting more people. — 00:10:53
★★★ Ali's medical goals for 2020: decide which specialty to apply for, take some exams, and get good at teaching communication skills, for which he is training as a facilitator, and at teaching physiology. — 00:11:22
★★★ Ali thinks an annual review should include a bucket list, which can be as unrealistic as you like; he normally has at least 50 things on his. — 00:11:22

00:11:36 — The bucket list

★★★ Writing a wish on a bucket list gives it background processing, Ali says: having written down "learn archery", he is more likely to seek out lessons when an opportunity or a free afternoon comes up. — 00:11:51
★★ Becoming a Gymshark athlete will never happen, Ali says, but having it on his bucket list encourages him to go to the gym and eat more consistently and to get better at social media. — 00:12:15 · Gymshark
★★ Ali's bucket list includes archery, sword fighting, which he links to the fantasy series he has been reading, busking on the London Underground and filming it, writing a book and hosting a revision retreat. — 00:12:44 · London
★★ Ali and his brother have an idea for a revision retreat: 10 to 15 people in a cottage, studying for exams during the day and relaxing in the evenings with food and board games; Ali maybe wants to hold one next year (2020) or the year after. (hedged) — 00:13:14 · Taimur Abdaal, Airbnb
★★ Ali would like to film a study-with-me video in a ridiculous location, such as in front of the pyramids in Egypt. — 00:13:14
★★ Ali's bucket list also includes getting married and having a child, performing a magic show and teaching a medicine revision lecture series. — 00:13:40
★★ Ali would like to pass the postgraduate medical exams MRCP, MRCS, MRCOG and FRCA just for fun, because he loves studying and exams. (playful) — 00:13:40 · MRCP
★★ Ali's bucket list includes converting a room into a YouTube studio and buying a house to let as a real-estate investment. — 00:13:40
★★ Buying a Tesla Model 3 is on the bucket list of Ali, who says it is going to happen at some point, though he wants to convince himself for as long as he can that his current car is fine. — 00:13:40

00:14:09 — Other annual review formats, and why he does not like goals

★ The bucket list of Ali includes streaming on Twitch and joining a World of Warcraft raiding guild. — 00:14:09 · Twitch, World of Warcraft
★★ Tiago Forte's annual review has about 50 questions, many of them goal-oriented, such as listing your top three wins of the year. — 00:14:09 · Tiago Forte
★★★ Ali does not like having goals: he prefers enjoying the process and having systems, such as releasing a video a week rather than reaching a million subscribers by the end of 2020, because numerical goals feel to him at odds with gratitude and with what we have being enough. — 00:14:38

“I just don't really like the idea of having goals.”
★★ SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely) do not sit well with Ali, though he could be wrong and may change his mind about goal setting next year (2020). (hedged) — 00:15:02

00:15:15 — The Notion template, the Notion sign-up plug, comments and sign-off

Threads in this video

first on record · How should you review your year and plan the next? — In his annual review Ali writes down the experiences and people he is grateful for, what he discovered that year, the lessons he learned and what to do better the following year; he highly recommends doing one. (00:00:00)
refine · How should you review your year and plan the next? — In an annual review you can note down the lessons you learned that year, which are nice to look back on: Ali's lesson of 2017, he thinks, was the power of consistency, which has helped grow everything he has tried to do. (00:09:34)
shift · Which note-taking app should you use? — Ali used to do his annual review in Evernote; he prefers Notion for it because its toggles keep the review from turning into one massive page. (00:00:57)
restate · Which productivity system should you use to organise your life? — Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain, a workshop, online course and series of blog posts, has changed the way Ali thinks about content creation and note-taking. (00:07:02)
restate · Which productivity apps should you use? — Ali calls Notion a genuine game changer of 2019: he uses it for many things, and it is one of the few apps whose design has changed the way he thinks. (00:06:21)
first on record · How do creators make money from YouTube? — Signing with the agency Standard changed the game for Ali on YouTube: he can now do sponsored videos pretty much whenever, and the extra money lets him hire people full time and scale the channel. (00:03:25)
looked back · Ali is invited on a medical mission trip to Sudan to run mobile clinics and teach medical students (2019) — Ali lists his trip to Sudan in January 2019 among the experiences he is grateful for that year, praising its super nice, friendly people. (00:01:27)
milestone · Ali, a fifth-year medical student at Cambridge University, is co-founder of SixMed, a small company running courses for medical school applicants, and has taught its BMAT Crash Course for five years. — Ali lists launching an online UKCAT course among his accomplishments of 2019. (00:04:24)
milestone · Not Overthinking, Ali and Taimur's podcast (2019) — Ali and his brother launched a podcast in 2019 and have kept it going for about 36 weeks with some consistency. (00:04:24)
milestone · Ali's weekly email newsletter (2018) — Ali's email newsletter grew from maybe 4,000 subscribers a year earlier to 18,000. (00:04:53)
milestone · Ali teaches physiology supervisions to first-year medical students at Girton College, Cambridge (2019) — Ali counts becoming a physiology supervisor at Girton College, Cambridge, among his accomplishments of 2019 and calls it really fun. (00:04:53)
refine · When should you hire people for your business? — About four to six months before, Ali started outsourcing the editing of his videos; it freed up so much of his time each week that he could go to the gym and try to eat more healthily. (00:06:21)
revise · When should you hire people for your business? — From The E-Myth, a book on growing a small business, Ali concludes that he made many mistakes in the early stages of his company SixMed by not delegating enough. (00:07:31)
refine · How do you exercise consistently and get in shape? — Going to the gym while listening to Audible is much more fun for Ali now that he follows the Julian Method for building muscle; after StrongLifts, 5/3/1 and others, it is the method he has stuck to longest. (00:07:31)
first on record · How do you have more energy during the day? — Ali discovered the power of light lunches: a heavy lunch leaves him full and tired for the rest of the day, while a light lunch, at least for him, leaves him more energised. (00:08:00)
refine · How do you become happier? — One of Ali's 2019 life lessons comes from Kurt Vonnegut: every now and then ask yourself "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is", a reminder to be grateful. (00:08:59)
restate · How should you plan your day? — Ali's daily highlight: every day you pick a single thing to focus on, which becomes your highlight of the day; he is working on a video about it. (00:08:59)
promised · Ali promises a video on the daily highlight (2019) — Ali says he is working on a video on the daily highlight. (00:08:59)
first on record · How do you design the life you want? — Ali thinks an annual review should include a bucket list, which can be as unrealistic as you like; he normally has at least 50 things on his. (00:11:22)
refine · How do you design the life you want? — Writing a wish on a bucket list gives it background processing, Ali says: having written down "learn archery", he is more likely to seek out lessons when an opportunity or a free afternoon comes up. (00:11:51)
predicted · Ali predicts he will buy a Tesla Model 3 at some point (2019) — Ali predicts he will buy a Tesla Model 3 at some point. (00:13:40)
refine · Should you set goals, and how? — Ali does not like having goals: he prefers enjoying the process and having systems, such as releasing a video a week rather than reaching a million subscribers by the end of 2020, because numerical goals feel to him at odds with gratitude and with what we have being enough. (00:14:38)
restate · Should you set goals, and how? — SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely) do not sit well with Ali, though he could be wrong and may change his mind about goal setting next year (2020). (00:15:02)
promised · Ali promises more study-with-me videos in unusual places if viewers like this one (2019) — Ali would like to film a study-with-me video in a ridiculous location, such as in front of the pyramids in Egypt. (00:13:14)
first use · Ali jokes that he is on a quest to become a Gymshark athlete (2019) — Becoming a Gymshark athlete will never happen, Ali says, but having it on his bucket list encourages him to go to the gym and eat more consistently and to get better at social media. (00:12:15)
milestone · Ali prepares for the MRCP, a postgraduate medical exam (2019) — Ali would like to pass the postgraduate medical exams MRCP, MRCS, MRCOG and FRCA just for fun, because he loves studying and exams. (00:13:40)
mentioned · Thomas Frank gets on a Skype call with Ali and introduces him to Standard, the agency Ali joins (2019) — The productivity YouTuber Thomas Frank gave Ali a lot of good advice a few months before and introduced him to Standard, the agency Ali is now part of. (00:02:56)
retold · Simon Clark's YouTube channel inspires Ali to start his own — Ali has never met Simon Clark in real life, but Simon Clark was one of the two YouTubers who really inspired him to start his channel. (00:03:25)
update · Ali's years of playing World of Warcraft — The bucket list of Ali includes streaming on Twitch and joining a World of Warcraft raiding guild. (00:14:09)
paused · Ali prepares for the MRCOG exam in obstetrics and gynaecology, documented in study-with-me videos (2018) — Ali would like to pass the postgraduate medical exams MRCP, MRCS, MRCOG and FRCA just for fun, because he loves studying and exams. (00:13:40)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Ali jokes that he is on a quest to become a Gymshark athlete (2019) — running joke (last seen 2020); last: callback, 2020-12-31
Ali predicts he will buy a Tesla Model 3 at some point (2019) — came true
Ali promises a video on the daily highlight (2019) — open (no report in 2019–2024); last: promised, 2019-12-27 (said on 2019-12-20, implied)
Ali promises more study-with-me videos in unusual places if viewers like this one (2019) — kept; last: progress update, 2020-04-14
Ali, a fifth-year medical student at Cambridge University, is co-founder of SixMed, a small company running courses for medical school applicants, and has taught its BMAT Crash Course for five years. — last documented in 2020 (looked back on in 2024)
Not Overthinking, Ali and Taimur's podcast (2019) — last documented in 2020; last: milestone, 2020-12-13
Ali teaches physiology supervisions to first-year medical students at Girton College, Cambridge (2019) — last documented in 2020; last: milestone, 2020-09-27
Ali prepares for the MRCOG exam in obstetrics and gynaecology, documented in study-with-me videos (2018) — lapsed; last: paused, 2020-04-14

Mentioned

Central: Notion

Also: People: Derek Sivers · James Stuber · Jim Collins · Kurt Vonnegut · Molly Hunt · Peter McKinnon · Robert Jordan · Simon Clark · Taimur Abdaal · Thomas Frank · Tiago Forte · Tynan

Projects: Not Overthinking · Sunday Snippets

Works: Building a Second Brain · Bulletproof Radio · FRCA · Julian Method for Building Muscle · MRCOG · MRCP · MRCS · Superhuman Social Skills · The E-Myth · The Tim Ferriss Show · The Wheel of Time · UKCAT

Organizations: 6med · Airbnb · Girton College · Gymshark · Instagram · Kickstarter · Standard · Tesla · Twitch

Concepts: daily highlight · flywheel · General surgery · If this isn't nice, I don't know what is · master boring fundamentals · obvious to you, amazing to others · SMART goals · Window openers vs door knockers

Places: Egypt · France · Japan · Lake District · London · Seville · Sudan

Products: Adidas Ultraboost · Audible · Evernote · Finasteride · Leuchtturm1917 notebook · Philips Hue · Tesla Model 3 · World of Warcraft

Only in the description or credits: go first · write-off principle

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