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The Most PRODUCTIVE Thing I Do Each Year

2021-01-03 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 21:04 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Sponsor segment present, His own numbers, Family, Lesson from a book

Ali walks through his 2020 annual review in Notion in three steps: reflect (gratitude, the year's timeline, discoveries, reflective questions), plan (the ideal ordinary week, life areas, a bucket list) and execute, his "anti-waste man system", which he shows at work on his goal of learning to draw like a concept artist.

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 most important thing he does each year: the annual review's three steps and three reasons

  • ★★★ Ali calls his annual review the most important thing he does each year and recommends one to everyone; his runs in three steps: reflect, plan and execute. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali's first reason for an annual review: it is really useful for setting goals, as the first step towards effective goals for the new year. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ An annual review makes time go slower, Ali says: a few hours on his 2020 review reminded him of much he had done, experienced and was grateful for, which he had completely forgotten. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Most of us are absorbed in day-to-day urgent things, Ali says, so the annual review gives him one time a year to step back, take stock of his life as a whole and ask himself big questions. — 00:00:29

00:01:12 — Notion sponsors the video; the template and its questions work in any app

  • ★★ Ali shares his annual review template in Notion, with some of his answers; anyone who does not want Notion can copy its questions into any app, onto pen and paper or into any other system. — 00:01:27 · Notion

00:01:57 — Reflect: grateful for people, experiences, accomplishments, things and game changers

  • ★★ The reflect step of Ali's annual review has four sections: what he is grateful for, what happened that year, cool stuff he discovered, and various reflective questions. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Ali splits what he is grateful for into five parts, people, experiences, accomplishments, things and game changers, a fairly arbitrary categorisation that he finds helpful. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Writing down the people he is grateful for, with a few words on why, usually reminds Ali to send each a little thank-you email or text to let them know he is thinking of them. — 00:02:26
  • ★ Ali had a lot fewer experiences in 2020 than in 2019 because of the pandemic. — 00:02:26 · COVID-19
  • ★★ Ali usually does not appreciate what he has done and moves straight on to the next thing, so once a year, in his annual review, he gives himself permission to think about his accomplishments. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Among the things Ali is grateful for in 2020 are his desk setup, the Apple products he uses regularly, his PS5, a reMarkable tablet and his AirPods Pro. — 00:02:55 · Apple
  • ★★ Ali says a video about his desk setup is coming soon. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ Ali says a review of his reMarkable tablet is coming in a little while. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ Ali's game changers of 2020 include listening to audiobooks at speed multiples, which he discovered that year, and the power of coaches, of whom he has had many. — 00:03:32
  • ★★ Having a team who work with him on his YouTube channel and its business has been an absolute game changer for Ali: it is no longer just him making the videos and building the business. — 00:03:32
  • ★★ On the day of recording Ali started art lessons and tennis lessons. — 00:03:32

00:03:59 — What happened this year: the big picture and a timeline from the calendar

  • ★★ Because he forgets most of what happened early in the year, Ali writes a big picture of his life off the top of his head, then builds a timeline by going through his calendar month by month. — 00:03:59
  • ★★ Writing down the year's highlights month by month is for Ali a fun little way of spaced repetition that reminds him what he did and helps time slow down. — 00:04:28 · spaced repetition
  • ★★★ 2020 was the year Ali realised even more that working with people, such as coaches, makes everything more fun and also accelerates results. — 00:04:28

00:04:40 — Cool stuff discovered: working with people, physical stuff, articles, podcasts, books and channels

  • ★ Among Ali's physical discoveries of 2020 are face towels, after drying his face with his bath towel, which he has heard is bad, and a water bottle with a straw. — 00:04:57
  • ★★ A separate portable laptop, with a Mac mini running his desk, has been a real game changer for Ali: his laptop used to power the whole desk setup and was too much effort to unplug. — 00:05:24 · Mac mini
  • ★★ Ali's weekly email Sunday Snippets goes to his mailing list of currently 62,000 people. — 00:05:54 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ For the articles, podcasts, books and videos he discovered in the year, Ali looks through the archive of his weekly email Sunday Snippets and handpicks a few. — 00:05:54 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ Ali often forgets where a new mental model came from and that he did not know it before; going through the year's list of articles and videos reminds him. — 00:06:23
  • ★★ A line that resonated with Ali, from a Harvard Business Review article, says people driven to excel tend to under-invest in their families and over-invest in their careers, though loving family relationships are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness. — 00:06:52
  • ★★ Ali says the Harvard Business Review line on driven people under-investing in their families really calls him out. — 00:06:52
  • ★ YouTube channels Ali really enjoyed in 2020 include Binging with Babish, Yes Theory and Tom Scott. — 00:07:21
  • ★★ The reflective questions are new in Ali's 2020 annual review: his assistant, who had recently started a YouTube channel, sent him the list to answer. — 00:07:21

00:07:30 — Reflective questions

  • ★★ Many readers of Sunday Snippets, to whom Ali sent these reflective questions, replied that they helped them get clarity about where they want to go this year (2021) and in life. — 00:07:50 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ Asked which one thing he learned in 2020 he would teach, Ali answers the power of accountability. — 00:07:50
  • ★★ What kept Ali up at night with excitement in 2020 was his course, the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and building a team. — 00:07:50 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Video games have been a source of joy for Ali in 2020; listening to audiobooks while playing them is for him absolute pure peak pleasure. — 00:08:20

00:08:35 — Plan: visualisation exercises and the ideal ordinary week

  • ★★ Ali is not very good at visualisation exercises: he struggles to think very far ahead and perhaps just cannot imagine the future well. — 00:08:49
  • ★★★ The ideal ordinary week: write down in great detail a good but normal week, not a holiday, five years from now, to work out what you need to do over the next few years to get there. — 00:08:49
  • ★★ Ali's executive performance coach tells him to be really specific in these visions; Ali warns against the easy trap of wanting the same but more, such as going from one video a week to two. — 00:09:33
  • ★★★ The most important thing to come out of visualising your future, Ali says, is what you are not doing in that vision: what is no longer a priority, and why you are still doing it now. — 00:09:33

00:10:02 — Life, medicine and business: health and relationships for next year

  • ★★ Ali plans the new year in three areas, life, medicine and business, the three aspects of his life, with health, relationships and happiness under life. — 00:10:02
  • ★★ For his health next year (2022) Ali wants workouts three times a week, regular tennis, a squash club and a daily mobility and stretching routine. — 00:10:02
  • ★★ Ali wants to take dating more seriously after lockdown and may get a dating coach, which might even make a good video. (hedged) — 00:10:37
  • ★★ Ali wants to be more intentional about keeping in touch with friends. — 00:10:37
  • ★★ Ali writes his bucket list, his favourite part of the annual review, from scratch each year and then checks the previous list: anything he forgot is usually no longer a priority. — 00:10:37

00:10:50 — The bucket list and its 2021 items

  • ★★★ Seven of the 20 items on Ali's bucket list are for 2021: writing a book, learning to draw, busking on the London Underground, hosting a productivity retreat, living in a few cities for one to two months each, a six-pack and snowboarding. — 00:11:06
  • ★★ Whenever Ali wants inspiration or does not know what to do with his life, he looks at his bucket list and sees he can make headway towards its items. — 00:11:36

  • ★★★ An annual review easily stays pure introspection, Ali says; a big fan of execution, he adds the execute step, his anti-waste man system, to stop being a "waste man" and start making progress. — 00:11:36

    “this section is here to make me stop being a waste man and actually start making progress towards stuff”

00:11:50 — Execute: the anti-waste man system on learning to draw like a concept artist

  • ★★★ The first question of Ali's anti-waste man system is the dream: unlike a goal, a dream is emotionally resonant, what his friend August Bradley calls a value goal, such as learning to draw. — 00:12:24
  • ★★★ The next question is why: Ali says a very strong why behind what we set out to do is really important, because without one we just will not get it done. — 00:12:49
  • ★★ Ali's why for learning to draw like a concept artist: he loves concept art and the idea of illustrating scenes from his favourite fantasy books; it is also good content, and learning new skills is always fun. — 00:12:49
  • ★★★ The next step of Ali's anti-waste man system converts the dream into a SMART goal, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound, which he admits is a bit controversial. — 00:13:13
  • ★★★ Ali's SMART goal: by the end of 2021 he will have illustrated a scene from The Wheel of Time, Mistborn or The Stormlight Archive and uploaded a speed painting of it to YouTube, maybe as a Short, and Instagram. — 00:13:42 · The Wheel of Time, Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive, Instagram
  • ★★ A SMART goal makes it very easy for Ali to know whether he has hit it, while the vaguer dream, learning to draw like a concept artist, stays important as the emotionally resonant part. — 00:14:11
  • ★★★ The next question in Ali's system is how surprised he would be, on a scale of one to ten, if he failed at the goal by this time next year (2022). — 00:14:11
  • ★★ Ali would be only two out of ten surprised to miss his concept-art goal: he has wanted to learn to draw for a while but never has. — 00:14:36
  • ★★★ Ali's next question is your top three reasons why you might fail, which takes introspection and self-awareness about why you will be a waste man about the thing. — 00:14:36
  • ★★ Ali's top three reasons he might fail to become a good concept artist: not practising enough, the main one, its technical difficulty, and not knowing how to practise or the roadmap. — 00:14:36
  • ★★★ Ali's next two questions are who can help me achieve this goal and how can I stack the deck in my favour; who comes first, because achieving goals is often about who, not how. — 00:15:19
  • ★★ Ali calls Who Not How, by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan, a really good book: high performers' success comes from enlisting people to help rather than doing it all themselves. — 00:15:57
  • ★★ For learning to draw, Ali says it makes a lot of sense to find an art teacher, maybe with remote Zoom lessons, and online courses. — 00:15:57 · Zoom
  • ★★★ Ali recommends an accountability buddy, usually a friend who holds you accountable for doing the thing. — 00:15:57
  • ★★★ Ali and his brother Taimur, his accountability buddy, pledge 15 minutes a day each, Taimur of improvised piano and Ali of drawing, or £100 to the other for any missed day; they check in on their weekly podcast. — 00:16:37 · Taimur Abdaal, Not Overthinking
  • ★★★ One of Ali's favourite ways to stack the deck is time blocking: a recurring calendar event, such as 15 minutes of art practice at 11.45 a.m., makes space for the practice and reminds him to do it. — 00:17:06 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Since not knowing the roadmap to becoming a good artist would stop him, Ali says signing up for an online course on concept art or art basics gives him that roadmap. — 00:17:06
  • ★★★ A skill feeling too technically difficult is no valid reason to fail, Ali says: he only has to reduce his perfectionism and post the concept-art video anyway, and he will have made progress by next year (2022) if he just does it. — 00:17:40

00:18:08 — Take action right now: the art course, Alessandro, the sketchbook and the pencils

  • ★★★ The most important question of Ali's anti-waste man system is take action right now: what action step you will take during your annual review itself to start on the path. — 00:18:08
  • ★★★ A couple of days before the video Ali signed up for an online figure-drawing course, on proko.com he thinks, and posted it on Instagram for accountability and for the fun of showing how bad his drawings were. (hedged) — 00:18:08 · Instagram
  • ★★★ A concept artist, Alessandro, messaged Ali on Instagram offering to mentor him; he is now Ali's art teacher, gave his first online lesson at 8 a.m. that morning, and they plan lessons three times a week. — 00:18:38 · Instagram
  • ★★ On day three of his art journey Ali says it only happened because he took the time for the execution step of his annual review. — 00:19:40
  • ★★★ Having no pencils, Ali started the gesture-sketching course with a fine-liner pen instead of waiting for pencils from Amazon Prime: thinking you can only start once you have the equipment is, he says, dangerous and never true. — 00:20:08 · Amazon
  • ★★★ To start a YouTube channel, Ali says, just take out your phone and film a video, as he did, rather than wait for the best camera equipment: we almost never need equipment to get started. — 00:20:08

00:20:41 — Playlist of his year-review videos and sign-off

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Mentioned

Central: anti-waste man system · Notion

Also: People: Alessandro · August Bradley · Ben Hardy · Dan Sullivan · Elizabeth · Morgan Housel · Ryan Holiday · Taimur Abdaal · Tom Scott

Projects: Not Overthinking · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Sunday Snippets

Works: Mistborn · The Stormlight Archive · The Wheel of Time · Who Not How

Organizations: Amazon · Apple · Binging with Babish · Harvard Business Review · Instagram · Proko · Yes Theory

Concepts: accountability buddy · COVID-19 · ideal ordinary week · SMART goals · spaced repetition · time-blocking

Places: London Underground

Products: AirPods Pro · Mac mini · PlayStation 5 · reMarkable 2 · Zoom

Also centred on anti-waste man system: My PRODUCTIVE Bucket List (2021)

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