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Answering your Questions

2020-04-17 · Q&A video · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 26:47 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Relationships and personal life, Goals, purpose and life design, Health, sleep and habits, Productivity and time, Money and investing, Medicine and his doctor years, Tools, apps and tech, Learning and studying, Books and reading, Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Answering questions · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, Lesson from a book, Family, He changed his mind

In a Q&A for passing 600,000 subscribers, Ali answers about 25 questions: start YouTube and blogs with quantity and consistency, keep options open instead of long-term plans or goals, his five most valuable habits, AirPods over the Apple Watch, no-code tools over learning to code, and his plans after his foundation job ends in August 2020.

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: 600,000 subscribers and the Q&A

  • ★★ Ali, a doctor working in Cambridge, says his channel has recently hit 600,000 subscribers, and he marks it with this Q&A. — 00:00:00 · Cambridge, YouTube

00:00:29 — How he figured out what to do on YouTube

  • ★★ Before starting YouTube Ali did not really know what he wanted to do there; he knew he wanted to make educational content for medical students to help market his business teaching courses for medical applicants. — 00:00:29 · 6med, YouTube
  • ★ When Ali first decided he wanted to be a YouTuber, around 2008, he wanted to do music production and be the next Kurt Schneider. — 00:00:58 · YouTube
  • ★★★ When starting on YouTube, Ali says, you just start making things; over time you niche down as you learn what resonates with people, so it is a case of trying a lot of things and seeing what is fun and what sticks. — 00:01:03 · YouTube
  • ★★ For Ali, what was fun and also stuck was tech, productivity, study tips and education, so that is what he has kept making. — 00:01:27

00:01:38 — Something 99% of his followers don't know: his stutter

  • ★★★ Ali says probably 99% of his followers do not know he has a stutter: he has had it since about the age of five, it was quite bad at the start of secondary school, and it is now a lot better. — 00:01:43
  • ★★ Ali says his stutter is much better when he sleeps well; he stutters on certain letters such as D, G and N, so when speaking he plans ahead in his head to swap in a different word on the fly. — 00:01:55
  • ★ Ali's stutter is frustrating when telling jokes: in a group he thinks of a joke but the words will not come out; it is a part of his life he rarely talks about. — 00:02:12

00:02:33 — Tips for starting a YouTube channel: quantity over quality

  • ★★★ Ali's first tip for someone starting on YouTube: focus on quantity rather than quality, because your first 100 videos will be absolutely terrible; the advice came from his friend Simon Clark. — 00:02:33 · YouTube
  • ★ Ali followed Simon Clark for a long time, and they became friends in real life a few months before this video. — 00:02:48
  • ★★ Simon Clark (quoted): In a video about three years earlier, Simon Clark said a new YouTuber's first 50 videos will be awful, so churn them out as soon as possible. — 00:02:54 · YouTube
  • ★★ When starting anything new, Ali says, we focus too much on making it good; the wrong thing is to not publish, because by churning out quantity the quality improves over time and you learn far more than by perfecting one video. — 00:03:05
  • ★★ YouTube has changed Ali's life and the lives of many people he knows who took it seriously, Ali says, but it requires a huge amount of consistency over a very long period of time. — 00:03:37 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali calls it next level that you can make money from YouTube without viewers paying anything: very few business models work that way. — 00:03:57 · YouTube

00:04:18 — Most important principle: randomness and optionality

  • ★★★ Ali's main principle at the moment: do things that are fun in the short term but contribute to the longer term, which for him means keeping his options open rather than having long-term plans. — 00:04:21
  • ★★★ Because the world is so uncertain, Ali calls a five- or ten-year plan a bit pointless; his principle, from Daniel Gross, is to maximise randomness and optionality, increasing the surface area for opportunity so he can seize serendipitous chances. — 00:04:51 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali is deciding whether to stay in Cambridge and apply to a medical training pathway in the UK, travel the world once the COVID-19 situation is sorted, or move to another country to practise medicine; the last two keep his options more open. — 00:05:20 · Cambridge, United Kingdom, COVID-19

00:05:57 — Favourite Twilight book and a thank-you to Thomas Frank

  • ★ Asked by his friend Thomas Frank, Ali names Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight book, probably his favourite because it is such a riveting read. — 00:05:57 · Thomas Frank
  • ★★ Ali publicly thanks Thomas Frank for changing his life: on a Skype call around September 2019 Frank introduced him to Standard, the YouTube agency Ali is now part of. — 00:06:34 · Thomas Frank, YouTube

00:06:52 — Five habits that brought the most value

  • ★★★ The first of the five habits that have brought Ali the most value: getting a Kindle around 2008 and reading a lot. — 00:07:01 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali cites a saying he attributes, unsure, to Charlie Munger: every successful person says they read a lot, and that every successful person they know reads a lot too. (hedged) — 00:07:06
  • ★★ Ali's single biggest habit is reading quite a lot of nonfiction before bed. — 00:07:22
  • ★★ Ali's second most valuable habit is listening to podcasts in the car, mostly at double speed; in a learning phase, when you want to soak up information, he thinks double speed makes perfect sense, at least for him. — 00:07:30
  • ★★★ Ali's third habit is the capture habit from David Allen's Getting Things Done: the brain is designed for having ideas, not storing them, so he writes down every idea or thought, usually in an app, which frees his brain. — 00:07:49
  • ★★★ Ali's fourth habit is a mindset: whenever he feels a negative emotion he asks whether it is in his control, and if not he lets it go; after more than a decade of this, he says, he almost never has negative emotions. — 00:08:18
  • ★ Unable to think of a fifth habit, Ali names brushing his teeth most days, because his teeth have survived. (playful) — 00:09:05
  • ★★★ Ali's biggest micro-efficiency is avoiding the mouse and navigating with keyboard shortcuts; on a Mac the app Alfred makes it easy, there are Windows alternatives, and the seconds saved add up to hours. — 00:09:20 · keyboard navigation, Alfred, Microsoft Windows

00:09:25 — Most valuable micro-efficiency: keyboard navigation with Alfred

  • ★★ Ali says he cannot live without Alfred, which has saved him so much time; watching people click with the mouse now frustrates him as so slow. (overstated) — 00:09:47 · Alfred

00:10:18 — One thing on a billboard: it won't make you happy

  • ★★★ On a billboard Ali would put "it won't make you happy", an answer from a Tim Ferriss Show guest, perhaps Seth Godin or Derek Sivers; he reminds himself of it when buying things, as it is true of most things we buy. — 00:10:29 · The Tim Ferriss Show, Derek Sivers

    “it won't make you happy”

00:11:00 — Three likes and three dislikes about the medical profession

  • ★★ Three things Ali likes about medicine: everyone is really friendly, you talk to patients and touch their lives, and the teamwork and camaraderie, especially strong during the coronavirus period. — 00:11:10 · COVID-19
  • ★★ Ali dislikes the sense of martyrdom among many medical students and junior doctors: everyone is working hard, and he does not find complaining about it helpful. — 00:11:30
  • ★★ Ali dislikes how backward medicine is technologically in the UK: the NHS is fantastic in many ways but not at innovation, since without a profit motive there is no real drive for it, and its systems look early-2000s. — 00:11:43 · NHS, United Kingdom
  • ★★ Ali dislikes how all-consuming the job is for many doctors: well-rounded people with hobbies, instruments and sports enter medical school, but many later cannot keep them up because the job is so demanding. — 00:12:13

00:12:41 — Hogwarts house and favourite takeaway

  • ★ Ali has never done the Pottermore quiz, but owns a Gryffindor scarf and hat, so calls himself a Gryffindor for now. — 00:12:41 · Harry Potter (book series)
  • ★ Ali's favourite takeaway these days is Roosters Piri Piri, which his family went to often when they lived in Southend-on-Sea in Essex. — 00:12:54

00:13:22 — Most valuable thing outside medicine: the YouTube channel

  • ★★★ The most valuable thing Ali has done outside his academic and medical career is his YouTube channel, which has given him many opportunities and a lot of income. — 00:13:38 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali gets many emails each day saying his study techniques changed people's lives or that Not Overthinking, the podcast he runs with his brother Taimur, is helpful. — 00:13:55 · Taimur Abdaal, Not Overthinking

00:14:08 — Starting a blog that nobody reads yet

  • ★★ David Perell (quoted): David Perell's The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online argues that writing online, basically having a blog, is the single fastest way to accelerate your career, whatever you do. — 00:14:16
  • ★★★ Starting a blog is a flywheel, Ali says: at first nobody reads it, but like a flywheel it is very slow to get going and unstoppable once it is going, as with a YouTube channel. — 00:14:43 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says a new blogger may see traction after publishing weekly or twice-weekly posts for two years; anyone bothered by that time horizon should not do it, but he says go for it. — 00:15:12
  • ★★ Having no readers at first is a good thing, Ali says: you can experiment a lot with your content without appeasing an audience, which people with bigger audiences have to worry about. — 00:15:30

00:15:51 — Time management or attention management

  • ★★ Productivity has historically been about time management, Ali says, and has recently moved towards attention management: the idea that what we have in limited supply is attention rather than time. — 00:15:51
  • ★★★ With a full-time job Ali is very much in the time-management camp, since his time is physically limited and attention is not; as a full-time creator with much more time, he says it would become attention management. — 00:16:24

00:17:02 — Has Apple sponsored him; AirPods or Apple Watch

  • ★★ Apple has not sponsored Ali; he does not think Apple does sponsorships and has never seen a video sponsored by Apple. — 00:17:02 · Apple
  • ★★ Apple sent Ali two HomePods to review; other Apple products he buys, reviews and usually returns, because Apple's returns policy is really good. — 00:17:20 · Apple
  • ★ Ali hopes to join Apple's review programme one day and asks anyone who works at Apple or knows someone there to put him in touch. (hedged) — 00:17:35 · Apple
  • ★★★ If he could keep only one, Ali would keep the AirPods over the Apple Watch any day: he calls the AirPods a life-changing piece of tech and the Apple Watch not. — 00:17:46 · AirPods, Apple Watch
  • ★★ Ali finds the Apple Watch nice to have but overall very useless: he uses it only for Apple Pay and cannot wear it at work, where infection control requires bare below the elbows. — 00:17:56 · Apple Watch, COVID-19
  • ★★ The AirPods make it much less friction to listen to audiobooks and podcasts, Ali says, so in about three years with them he has listened to far more audio than he otherwise would have. — 00:18:12 · AirPods

00:18:42 — If the internet were down; the best thing he can cook

  • ★★ If the internet were down for a month, Ali would exercise more, read and take notes on more books, learn to cook and to dance, and get into music theory, all things the internet distracts him from. (hypothetical) — 00:18:42
  • ★ The best thing Ali can cook is a spaghetti bolognese from scratch, which he last made about two years earlier. — 00:19:13
  • ★★ During the COVID-19 isolation Ali is mostly living off takeaways, but he wants to prioritise cooking and healthy eating soon: learning to cook and meal prep healthy, efficient, reasonably priced meals. — 00:19:25 · COVID-19

00:19:50 — Learning to code and building a website

  • ★★ Ali first learned to code around 2007, from W3Schools and snippets of JavaScript online, which he no longer recommends: coding has changed so much in 13 years that how he learned no longer matters. — 00:20:10
  • ★★★ To learn to code, Ali says to sign up to a course on Codecademy or Code School; the one he recommends is Brilliant.org's Python course. — 00:20:21 · Brilliant
  • ★★★ For a standard website Ali recommends Squarespace or Wix as probably the easiest; a website with functionality, such as a web app, may mean learning to code. — 00:20:43 · Squarespace
  • ★★★ With so many no-code tools, Ali says the idea that you need to learn to code, a narrative he has been peddling for a while, is no longer strictly true, though learning still helps you see what is possible. — 00:20:55
  • ★★ For the last few years Ali has hardly written code: knowing the basics, he knows what he can build with no-code tools, and he can hire people who code properly. — 00:21:15

00:21:35 — Going back five years: notes on books and music theory

  • ★★★ If he could go back five years, Ali would take more notes on the books he was reading. — 00:21:41
  • ★★ Ali is reading Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes, which he says is blowing his mind and he wishes he had read years ago. — 00:21:48
  • ★★ Ali says that for every book, article or podcast he would take some notes and work out his own thoughts and how it fits his wider mental models. — 00:22:00
  • ★★ Ali wishes he had taken music more seriously and got better at music theory: he has played the piano for five years, since his third year of medical school, and can play chords and sing along but never learned to read music. — 00:22:17
  • ★★ Anyone can take notes on books and should start today, Ali says; he has just started, and is actively working on music theory. — 00:22:46

00:22:58 — Goals for the next five years

  • ★★★ Ali does not really believe in setting goals: he is open to changing his mind, but for the last few years he has been very uneasy with the idea of having them. — 00:22:58
  • ★★★ Ali's one goal was to be financially independent, not relying on his job for income, and he says that is now roughly true: he does not need his job as a doctor to survive income-wise. — 00:23:16 · work optional
  • ★★ Ali is not big on goal setting; he is much keener on building a lifestyle and systems he can use and be happy with forever. — 00:23:52

00:24:08 — Another career: content creator or a startup

  • ★★ Instead of medicine, Ali would choose to be a full-time content creator, and besides that some kind of startup. — 00:24:08
  • ★★ Ali started his own business in his second year of medical school, in 2013, and it was really fun for the first few years while it was growing. — 00:24:25 · 6med
  • ★★ Ali is now trying to set up a few other businesses; he has tried to set up a business every year since he was 13, with his friend James, and always found it exhilarating and fun. — 00:24:38

00:24:53 — Living in another country after August 2020

  • ★★ Ali, living in the UK since 2003, is contemplating living in another country: he would like to try America, Australia and New Zealand, and likes the idea of Hong Kong, South Korea and Argentina. — 00:24:53 · United Kingdom, United States
  • ★★★ From August 2020 Ali will be unemployed, because he has not applied to a medical training pathway in the UK; that gives him a year to do whatever he wants, and he is thinking about where to travel. — 00:25:18 · United Kingdom

00:25:42 — Collabs with Thomas Frank and Matt D'Avella; a semi-regular Q&A series

  • ★★ Ali would love to collaborate with Thomas Frank and Matt D'Avella; one big reason he wants to live in the US for a while is that it unlocks collabs with many of his internet friends. — 00:25:55 · Thomas Frank, Matt D'Avella, United States
  • ★★ Ali tells Thomas Frank and Matt D'Avella he will contact them about collaborations when he moves to America. — 00:26:08 · Thomas Frank, Matt D'Avella, United States
  • ★★★ Ali will make a semi-regular series answering questions like these, about once a week or twice a month, putting videos out without worrying about lights, camera and audio. — 00:26:20

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked how often a beginner YouTuber should upload, the channel recommends one to two times per week. — creator comment · YouTube
  • ★ Asked for tips on managing a stutter, Ali replies that he wishes he had any. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked whether he had not wanted to specialise in obstetrics, Ali replies that he changed his mind. — creator comment · Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked how Alfred differs from Spotlight on the Mac, the channel says Alfred is more powerful. — creator comment · Alfred

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: AirPods · keyboard navigation · optionality · stutter

Also: People: Charlie Munger · Daniel Gross · David Allen · Derek Sivers · Kharma Medic · Kurt Schneider · Matt D'Avella · Seth Godin · Simon Clark · Sönke Ahrens · Taimur Abdaal · Thomas Frank

Projects: Not Overthinking

Works: Breaking Dawn · Getting Things Done · Harry Potter (book series) · How to Take Smart Notes · The Tim Ferriss Show · The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online · Twilight

Organizations: 6med · Apple · Brilliant · Code School · Codecademy · Deliveroo · NHS · Roosters Piri Piri · Standard · W3Schools · YouTube

Concepts: attention management · COVID-19 · flywheel · quick capture · time management · work optional

Places: Argentina · Australia · Cambridge · Hong Kong · New Zealand · South Korea · Southend-on-Sea · United Kingdom · United States

Products: Alfred · Apple Pay · Apple Watch · HomePod · Kindle · Microsoft Windows · Python · Squarespace · Wix

Only in the description or credits: Obstetrics and gynaecology · Spotlight

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