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Love, Money and Relationships - Answering your Assumptions

2020-12-13 · Q&A video · Ali · recording, 29:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Relationships and personal life (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness, Productivity and time, Health, sleep and habits, Medicine and his doctor years, Money and investing, YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: Answering questions · tags: Family, His own numbers, His medical past

Answering assumptions viewers sent on Instagram, Ali says he is single with little dating history, judges attraction first and calls dating a numbers game; he is almost never stressed, avoids burnout by enjoying his work, is rich by his own definition but not yet a millionaire, and would like to be a doctor part-time.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Secret-girlfriend assumptions read out; the categories; why this video is self-indulgent

  • ★ For actually useful content, Ali points viewers to Matt D'Avella, Thomas Frank, Peter McKinnon and a long list of other YouTubers. — 00:00:58 · Matt D'Avella, Thomas Frank, Peter McKinnon
  • ★ Ali does not think he has ever had a day when he just wanted to lie in bed all day. — 00:00:58

00:01:08 — Productivity: lying in bed, procrastination, acknowledging emotions, sleep and rest

  • ★★ Ali thinks everyone enjoys procrastinating; he likes to think of his own as productive procrastination. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ When Ali catches himself procrastinating, such as scrolling Instagram on the sofa, he asks himself what he wants to be doing right now, and if the answer is not scrolling, he gets up and does it. — 00:01:27 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali acknowledges negative emotions such as disappointment, anger, fear or doubt, works out why each came about, then decides whether he wants to keep feeling it. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali usually discusses such emotions with his brother on their weekly podcast, Not Overthinking. — 00:02:37 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali sleeps seven to nine hours a night, about eight on average now he is not working; as a full-time doctor he slept about seven. — 00:03:06
  • ★★ Ali finds it somewhat hard to relax because his mind races with work, the channel or wanting to read; watching a movie does not relax him, since he feels he could be doing something he would enjoy more. — 00:03:45

00:04:11 — Body: leg day and the personal trainer, six pack, teeth, workout clothes, getting hench

  • ★★ Ali has recently started working with a personal trainer, who makes him do squats and deadlifts with a kettlebell every session. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ Ali wants straighter teeth and now wears Invisalign aligners. — 00:04:14

00:05:12 — Emotions: rational thinking, appreciating others' emotions, crying at books

  • ★★ Ali says he rarely experiences negative emotions, and when he does he can choose to explain them away. — 00:05:13
  • ★★ Ali thinks life could become harder and less colourful if you do not acknowledge your emotions. — 00:05:38
  • ★★ Ali thinks he is generally very bad at appreciating other people's emotions and wants to get better at it. — 00:05:38
  • ★★ Ali cries mostly at epic scenes in books and audiobooks, often towards the end of every Brandon Sanderson book. — 00:06:07 · Brandon Sanderson

00:06:32 — Stress and how not to burn out

  • ★★ Ali says he is almost never stressed, basically never feels overworked and cannot remember the last time he felt stressed. — 00:06:36
  • ★★ Ali would be acutely stressed only in a serious medical situation where he did not know what to do and could not get hold of senior support. — 00:06:36

  • ★★★ Ali says the secret to not burning out is to enjoy what you are doing. — 00:07:06

    “the secret to not burning out is just to enjoy the stuff that you're doing”

  • ★★ Ali puts his not burning out partly down to luck: he says he is reasonably neurotypical and has never had to deal with mental health problems. — 00:07:06 · Mental health

  • ★★ Ali says he is lucky enough almost never to have to force himself to do something he does not enjoy. — 00:07:35

00:07:59 — Friends: studies, the coffee offer, creator friends

  • ★★ Outside school nobody cares how good people were at studying, Ali says; most of his friends are highly educated because school and university naturally surround you with people of a similar level of education. — 00:08:29
  • ★★ Ali's standing offer on his website: outside lockdown, anyone who comes to Cambridge can have a coffee with him; he has met loads of people that way, and some have become friends. — 00:08:58 · Cambridge, aliabdaal.com
  • ★★ Over the past few years Ali has become friends with many other creators through YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. — 00:08:58 · Twitter, Instagram
  • ★★ Ali says he does not feel lonely at all. — 00:09:23

00:09:34 — Personal: lonely, snob, judgemental, show-off, purpose and happiness, helping others, height, kindness, intelligence, family expectations

  • ★★ Ali says he does not think about people's social position enough to look up to them or down on them unless he is actively interacting with them. — 00:10:23
  • ★★ Ali says others can do what they want with their lives, but he is fairly judgemental towards himself. — 00:11:13
  • ★★★ Ali thinks everyone is a show-off to an extent: we all play a social-status game, signalling status and identity through things like an Apple Watch, a Gymshark hoodie or the way we talk and act. — 00:11:39 · Apple Watch, Gymshark

  • ★★★ Ali defines happiness as a mixture of pleasure in the moment and contentment in the long term. — 00:12:08

    “this mixture of kind of pleasure in the moment and contentment in the longterm”

  • ★★ Ali thinks he is reasonably content in the long term and truly happy. — 00:12:37

  • ★★★ Ali agrees he has no North Star or fundamental purpose, though he has started thinking about it much more than in the past. — 00:12:37
  • ★★★ Ali broadly agrees with those who say the idea that every life has one singular purpose is a myth: we are all trying to make meaning in our own ways. — 00:13:09
  • ★ Ali does not mind people speaking slowly in real life, only in podcasts and videos, which he can speed up. — 00:13:09
  • ★★ Helping others also makes you feel good, Ali says, so at a crossroads he sometimes asks which option would help the most people, knowing it will make him feel best too. — 00:13:58
  • ★★ Ali is about five foot eleven and a half barefoot and six foot in shoes, which is what he puts on his dating profiles. — 00:14:27
  • ★★ Ali thinks he is generally kind to strangers and people he knows less well, but sometimes not to his immediate friends and family. — 00:15:07
  • ★★ When Ali temporarily quit his job as a doctor, he lost some of his sense of identity as a doctor. — 00:15:37
  • ★★ Ali does not feel his intelligence defines him in any way. — 00:15:37
  • ★★ Ali says he, his mother and his grandmother do not really do Pakistani family expectations. — 00:16:18 · Ali Abdaal's mother, Ali Abdaal's grandmother, Pakistan

00:16:27 — Being a doctor: part-time ultimately

  • ★★★ Designing his life from scratch, Ali would not be a doctor five days a week but somewhere between one and three; he enjoys being a doctor but wants to do it part-time, as everything is more fun part-time. — 00:16:54

00:17:15 — Money: privileged background, what rich means, not a millionaire, why he prioritises money

  • ★★ Ali's mother is a single parent who worked as a doctor, which made the family somewhat wealthy, depending on the measuring stick. — 00:17:23 · Ali Abdaal's mother
  • ★★ Ali calls his background privileged in that his mother valued education above everything and the family did not have to worry about money as much as some people do. — 00:17:23 · Ali Abdaal's mother

  • ★★★ Ali defines being rich as money no longer limiting the experience you want from your life. — 00:17:45

    “money doesn't really act as a limiting factor in the experience you want from your life”

  • ★★★ Ali says he is not a millionaire yet, and hopes to become one someday. — 00:18:14

  • ★★ Ali has asked lots of doctors whether they would still be doctors if they won the lottery, and basically none said they would keep doing it full-time. — 00:18:43
  • ★★★ Ali prioritises making money and passive income because he thinks money gives you the freedom to do the work you enjoy. — 00:18:43 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali knows many doctors who do not enjoy the job full-time but must do it for the money, and never wants to be in that position. — 00:18:43

00:19:20 — YouTube: being recognised, a long break, consistency

  • ★★ Ali does other things on the side, but these days he mostly just makes internet videos, calling himself an unemployed bum. — 00:19:20
  • ★★ Ali loves being recognised by viewers, especially when people want to meet him in person, as very quick encounters can be awkward. — 00:19:20
  • ★★ Ali cannot imagine taking a long break from YouTube, though he may, and reserves the right to. (hedged) — 00:20:08
  • ★★★ Ali thinks YouTube benefits from consistency and calls himself a big proponent of consistency in everything in life. — 00:20:08
  • ★★ Ali thinks his brother Taimur is probably smarter than him and would score slightly higher on an IQ test, which does not worry him. (hedged) — 00:20:08 · Taimur Abdaal

00:20:21 — His brother and his mother

00:21:09 — Relationships: dating history, friend zone, time to date, choosiness, DMs, Hinge, perfume

  • ★★ Ali's longest relationship lasted about two or three months. (hedged) — 00:21:23
  • ★★ Ali has been on perhaps four to six second dates; he has lost count, but says not many. (hedged) — 00:21:53
  • ★★ Ali went through something like a heartbreak in 2012, and has not since. — 00:21:53
  • ★★ Ali has liked someone who considered him only a friend three or four times in his life. (hedged) — 00:22:14
  • ★★ Ali goes on few dates partly because it feels like too much effort and partly because of lockdown: just as he decided to take dating more seriously, coronavirus and lockdown came. — 00:22:45 · COVID-19
  • ★★★ When Ali is not doing something, he says, it is never because he lacks the time but because he is actively choosing not to make the time. — 00:22:45
  • ★★ Having studied IQ at university, Ali says IQ is one of the traits most correlated between partners. — 00:23:14
  • ★★ Ali says people in most friendship groups, marriages and relationships are generally matched across many spheres, smartness included. — 00:23:45
  • ★ All else being equal, Ali would prefer to date someone of his own nationality, but it is a very minor preference. — 00:25:09
  • ★★★ Ali asks three questions about anyone he dates: does he find her attractive, do they get on, and can he imagine spending the next 40 years with her; he calls all of dating a numbers game. — 00:25:09
  • ★★ Ali does not even see many of his direct messages because they come in far too fast. — 00:25:38 · Instagram
  • ★★ Ali has 25 likes on the dating app Hinge. — 00:26:06
  • ★★ Calling himself a staunch lefty, Ali disagrees with the framing of assumptions about "getting girls". — 00:26:31
  • ★★ Ali gets perfume recommendations from his friend Omar, who runs the YouTube channel School of Scents. — 00:26:31

00:27:07 — Romance: attraction first, no secret girlfriend, America, marrying a doctor, insecurity; sign-off

  • ★★ Ali first judges whether he is attracted to someone and only then looks at character, since he meets most women on dating apps, where a profile shows little character but allows a snap decision on attraction. — 00:27:28
  • ★★ Ali says, for the record, he does not have a secret girlfriend. — 00:28:27
  • ★★★ Ali is having second thoughts about moving to America. — 00:28:27 · United States
  • ★★ All else being equal, Ali would be more likely to get on with a doctor, since they would probably have more in common. — 00:28:55
  • ★★ Ali thinks all men are insecure to an extent around women they find attractive, himself included. — 00:28:55

Humor (significant)

  • Ali explains why he made this video — 00:00:58

    “This is a very self-indulgent video where I just talk about assumptions because I'm running out of content ideas.”

  • Told he wants to get hench so he can get women — 00:04:43

    “Like I will be the first to admit that the main purpose in getting hench is to become more attractive to women.”

  • Asked whether he is judgemental — 00:10:52

    “Like I joke that people who use Android and Windows devices are heathens.”

  • His height barefoot and in shoes — 00:14:27

    “And so obviously on all my dating profiles, I've rounded up to six foot.”

  • Told that deep inside he knows Taimur is the cuter and funnier brother — 00:20:08

    “It's not deep inside. I think it's fairly common knowledge.”

  • Told he is very choosy with girls and that is why he is single — 00:23:14

    “Beggars can't be choosers, as they say.”

  • Told he rejects all the girls who slide into his DMs — 00:25:38

    “If you do want to seriously get in touch with me, then email marriage at aliabdal.com and please send a photo.”

  • He corrects his count of Hinge likes from 35 to 25 — 00:26:06

    “God, I overestimated my importance.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

People: Ali Abdaal's grandmother · Ali Abdaal's mother · Brandon Sanderson · Matt D'Avella · Omar · Peter McKinnon · Taimur Abdaal · Thomas Frank

Projects: aliabdaal.com · Not Overthinking

Organizations: Gymshark · Instagram · School of Scents · Twitter · University of Cambridge

Concepts: burnout · COVID-19 · Mental health · passive income · privilege · productive procrastination

Places: Cambridge · Pakistan · United States

Products: Android · Apple Watch · Hinge · Invisalign · Microsoft Windows

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