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My PRODUCTIVE Bucket List (2021)

2021-01-06 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 18:51 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design (also: Relationships and personal life, Health, sleep and habits) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present, Lesson from a book

Ali plans the six items of his 2021 bucket list with his anti-waste man system: a 70,000-word rough draft of his book by 15 February, a "wife quest" with a weekly date slot, six-pack abs, busking on the London Underground or at least in Cambridge, drawing like a concept artist with three lessons a week, and better storytelling through homework for life.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Writing a book: the dream, the 15 February draft, 2,000 words a day and the book mailing list

  • ★★★ Ali has a book deal for a book loosely themed around meaningful productivity; he has started writing it and it is going reasonably well. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Writing his book feels scary to Ali: the path ahead is very uncertain, he does not know if he can do it, sitting down to write is a daily struggle, and he doubts it is good enough. — 00:00:25
  • ★★ From people he has spoken to, Ali says writing a book, like much else in life, is a case of believing in yourself, doing the work consistently and trying to make it good further down the line. — 00:00:25
  • ★★ Ali plans the six items of his 2021 bucket list with his anti-waste man system: for each a dream, the emotionally resonant goal, and then the question of why he wants it. — 00:00:54
  • ★★ Books such as The 4-Hour Workweek, Derek Sivers's Anything You Want and Austin Kleon's Show Your Work had a huge impact on Ali's life; he would love his own book to come close to that impact on someone's life. — 00:00:54 · The 4-Hour Workweek, Derek Sivers, Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon
  • ★★ Ali's anti-waste man system also asks what habit or projects are needed to make a goal happen. — 00:01:53
  • ★★★ Ali's SMART goal for his book: by 15 February 2021, a rough, messy draft of about 70,000 words to send to his editor for review. — 00:01:53
  • ★★ The habit Ali needs for his book draft is writing 2,000 words every day for the next six weeks; 42 days would give him 80-odd thousand words. — 00:01:53
  • ★★ Ali gives himself three out of ten for how surprised he would be to miss his book-draft goal: it feels too hard right now, and, knowing himself, he is a "waste man". — 00:02:22
  • ★★ The only way Ali would fail his book-draft goal is by missing his daily word count, and the first likely reason for that is time. (hedged) — 00:02:22
  • ★★★ Ali takes a lot of phone calls these days, and unless he actively blocks out time in his calendar for something, it basically never happens. — 00:03:10 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Ali's third reason he might miss his daily word count is that he is probably massively underestimating how hard 2,000 words a day are: they might take him ten hours a day. (hedged) — 00:03:10
  • ★★ Ali's writing coach, Azul (as heard), with whom he has had weekly sessions for several months, will hold him accountable for the book and give him emotional help when he struggles. — 00:04:08
  • ★★ Ali thinks an accountability buddy with a big forfeit would help him write, such as owing his housemate Sheen £5,000 for every day he does not write 2,000 words. — 00:04:08 · Sheen
  • ★★ In Ali's anti-waste man system the question of who can help is a brainstorm that need not be realistic: he probably will not hire someone to do his laundry, but it is good to know the option is there. — 00:04:37
  • ★★ To stack the deck in his favour, Ali will time-block three hours a day for writing only, two in the morning and one in the evening, hoping his fast typing makes 2,000 words in that time doable. (hedged) — 00:05:07 · time-blocking
  • ★★★ Ali is setting up a mailing list on the behind the scenes of writing his book: once or twice a week he will email what he has been working on and struggling with. — 00:05:07
  • ★★ Each week Ali's book email will give his word count for each day, another way for him to be held accountable to a number of people. — 00:05:57
  • ★★★ Taking action right now, which Ali calls the most useful part of the exercise, he has committed with his writing coach and, while preparing the video, time-blocked three hours of writing every day until 15 February. — 00:05:57 · time-blocking

00:06:32 — The wife quest

  • ★★★ Item two on Ali's 2021 bucket list is making progress towards finding a wife, his "wife quest", because, as everyone says, relationships are the most important area of life. — 00:06:32

    “I'm gonna call this my wife quest”

  • ★★ Ali says now is as good a time as any to start taking dating and relationships more seriously. — 00:06:53

  • ★★ Ali rates his happiness ten out of ten and cannot imagine a partner making his life better, but people in relationships said the same, so this might be an unknown unknown, like becoming a parent. (hedged) — 00:06:53
  • ★★ Ali's habit for his wife quest is committing to at least one date a week, or at least a weekly calendar slot for one, such as Saturday night or Sunday brunch, with no work, meetings or filming allowed. — 00:07:50
  • ★ With dating difficult during lockdown, Ali has been toying with the idea of Zoom dates, though he is not sure about them. (hedged) — 00:07:50 · Zoom
  • ★★ Ali has been vaguely wondering about hiring a dating coach for a while; he is not sure how it would help, but even Roger Federer has a tennis coach. (hedged) — 00:08:19
  • ★★ As the first action of his wife quest, Ali has already time-blocked the coming Sunday morning (10 January 2021) to go on a date, in theory. — 00:08:42
  • ★★ Ali would be two out of ten surprised to make no progress on dating, imagining he will say he is too busy, it is lockdown, or he is only 26 or 27 and can worry about love at 30. (hedged) — 00:08:42

00:09:31 — Six-pack abs

  • ★★ Item three on Ali's 2021 bucket list is getting six-pack abs at some point in the year, a fun challenge, as he has never had abs. — 00:09:31
  • ★ In 2017 or 2018, after a solid month of ab workouts at every gym visit, Ali once folded his arms and felt his abs for the first time. — 00:09:45
  • ★★ Ali's SMART goal for abs: by December 2021, at least a two-week period of his abs showing, which he will probably post on Instagram, though realistically he thinks it probably will not happen. (hedged) — 00:09:45 · Instagram
  • ★★ The only two habits Ali needs for abs are hitting the macros his personal trainer sets and actually doing the exercise: apparently the body is like a science project, where the right inputs give the outputs you want. (hedged) — 00:10:14
  • ★★ Ali would be two out of ten surprised to miss his abs goal; the main reason he might fail is that he has lived off takeaways for about the last three years and expects that may continue. — 00:10:14
  • ★★ Ali has worked with a personal trainer, Dan, for the last couple of months over Zoom twice a week; he has arranged his next session and will ask Dan to help him get six-pack abs. — 00:10:43 · Zoom

00:11:35 — Busk on the London Underground

  • ★★ Item four on Ali's bucket list, there for years, is busking on the London Underground with his guitar; he has never done it because it needs an audition and a licence, which COVID is apparently making harder. — 00:11:36 · COVID-19
  • ★★ Since busking in Cambridge needs no licence, Ali commits at the very least to busk on the streets of Cambridge with an amplifier, a microphone and a guitar, even if the London Underground auditions reject him. — 00:12:06 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali's friend Mary Spender agreed, when he messaged her, to help him busk on the London Underground. — 00:12:34

00:12:46 — Draw like a concept artist

  • ★★ Item five: Ali really wants to learn to draw like a concept artist and to illustrate favourite scenes from fantasy books such as Mistborn, Harry Potter, The Stormlight Archive and The Name of the Wind. — 00:12:46 · Mistborn, Harry Potter (book series), The Stormlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson
  • ★★ Ali's SMART goal for drawing: by the end of 2021 he will have created one illustration of a fantasy scene and uploaded it as a time-lapse to YouTube or Instagram. — 00:13:16 · Instagram
  • ★★ Learning to draw, Ali says, means practising every day but also having a roadmap towards actively improving and getting feedback. — 00:13:16
  • ★★★ Ali decided four days before the video to learn concept art; that morning his art teacher, Alessandro, worked with him on gestures and proportions: the head one unit, the torso three and a half, the legs four. — 00:13:16
  • ★★★ Ali has committed to three art lessons a week; turning up to a lesson without having practised would be embarrassing, so in theory the shame makes him practise between lessons. — 00:13:56
  • ★★ Ali's art lessons are usually at 8 a.m., which forces him out of bed; over the first four days he has been annoyed to get up but glad once he has had coffee and is drawing. — 00:13:56

00:14:24 — Become a better storyteller: why, books and Deep Dive interviews

  • ★★ Item six: Ali wants to become a better storyteller, because telling a good story is one of the best ways to improve social skills, which he is keen to do, and makes people more engaged in videos. — 00:14:25
  • ★★ Ali has recently been reading about storytelling in Matthew Dicks's Storyworthy and Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. — 00:14:25
  • ★★ Four of Ali's Deep Dive livestream interviews in 2020 made him want to develop a love of storytelling: with Austin Kleon, Ryan Holiday, Alex Banayan and David Perell. — 00:14:25 · Deep Dive, Austin Kleon, Ryan Holiday
  • ★★ Ali has taken David Perell's online writing school, Write of Passage, and calls the course very good. — 00:15:04
  • ★ Ali calls Alex Banayan's The Third Door a fantastic book that made him cry many, many times. — 00:15:04

00:15:33 — CuriosityStream sponsors the video; Nebula and the Deep Dives

00:17:52 — Homework for life and Matthew Dicks as storytelling coach

  • ★★★ Ali's habit for becoming a better storyteller is homework for life from Matthew Dicks's Storyworthy: every night, write down the most storyworthy thing that happened that day; done on and off for a year, he will now take it seriously. — 00:18:07
  • ★★★ Ali emailed Matthew Dicks asking him to be his storytelling coach, and they have a session booked for later in January 2021. — 00:18:07
  • ★ Ali hopes Matthew Dicks will also feature on a Deep Dive, which would be uploaded to Nebula. (hedged) — 00:18:07 · Deep Dive, Nebula

00:18:36 — The annual review video and its template; sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: anti-waste man system · London Underground

Also: People: Alessandro · Alex Banayan · Austin Kleon · Azul · Brandon Sanderson · Dan (trainer, mentioned from 2021) · David Perell · Derek Sivers · Donald Miller · Matthew Dicks · Patrick Rothfuss · Roger Federer · Ryan Holiday · Sheen

Projects: Deep Dive

Works: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years · Anything You Want · Harry Potter (book series) · Mistborn · Show Your Work! · Storyworthy · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Name of the Wind · The Stormlight Archive · The Third Door (book) · Write of Passage

Organizations: Instagram · Nebula

Concepts: accountability buddy · COVID-19 · homework for life · SMART goals · time-blocking

Places: Cambridge

Products: Zoom

Also centred on anti-waste man system: The Most PRODUCTIVE Thing I Do Each Year

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