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How To Beat Imposter Syndrome

2021-01-31 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 12:55 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Personal story · tags: His own products discussed, His medical past, Sponsor segment present, His own numbers

Ali tells three stories of his own imposter syndrome — teaching the first Part-Time YouTuber Academy cohort, co-directing the 2017 medical school pantomime, and writing his productivity book — and draws three lessons: what is obvious to you can be amazing to others, nobody is judging you (the spotlight effect), and you can be a guide rather than a guru.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Ali's long struggle with imposter syndrome and the three stories ahead

  • ★★ Ali says he has struggled with imposter syndrome for many years, with his YouTube channel, his blog and his career as a doctor, always asking why he is the person doing this. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★ Ali says he has got better at dealing with imposter syndrome over time but still gets it all the time. — 00:00:21

00:00:35 — Story one: the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and the curse of knowledge

  • ★★★ Ali meant his Part-Time YouTuber Academy, run in November 2020, for five or ten people; its first cohort had around 350 people paying decent sums to learn from him. — 00:00:50 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Teaching the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Ali felt imposter syndrome: with only 1-point-something million subscribers, he thought people should be listening to David Dobrik or MrBeast with 50 million. — 00:01:13 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Ali thought he had nothing to teach, because he had taken the systems behind his YouTube channel from the internet, from channels like Video Creators and Think Media, and from podcasts. — 00:01:13 · YouTube
  • ★★ During the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's live Zoom lessons for a few hundred students at a time, the chat exploded with people calling the information groundbreaking. — 00:01:42 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom

  • ★★★ When we teach or explain something it feels obvious to us, and we don't appreciate that what is obvious to us can be amazing to others, an idea Ali read in a Derek Sivers blog post. — 00:01:42 · Derek Sivers

    “what's obvious to us can be amazing to others”

  • ★★ Ali describes the curse of knowledge: once we know something, we think it is no longer interesting and that surely everyone knows it. — 00:02:15

  • ★★ Ali was not born able to run his channel's systems such as batching and parallel processing; he internalised them over three and a half years of making videos and reading productivity, business and startup books, treating the channel as a startup. — 00:02:15
  • ★★ A main obstacle to starting a blog, a podcast or a YouTube channel, Ali says, is feeling that your own ideas are worth nothing because they now feel obvious to you. — 00:03:01 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Whenever imposter syndrome springs up, Ali keeps reminding himself that what is obvious to him can be amazing to others. — 00:03:01
  • ★★★ In 2017, in his fifth year of medical school at Cambridge, Ali was one of the two directors of the hospital pantomime, a comedy production put on every year by about a hundred people. — 00:03:01 · University of Cambridge

00:03:15 — Story two: directing the hospital pantomime, the spotlight effect, and stepping into the role of the doctor

  • ★★ Will, the pantomime's other director, had about a decade of theatre experience and was a strong actor and singer; he messaged Ali on Facebook asking him to co-direct. — 00:03:43
  • ★★ Leading warm-ups and giving the pantomime's actors and singers feedback, Ali's heart thudded because he thought everyone knew he had zero experience, yet no one knew. — 00:04:33
  • ★★ Ali describes the spotlight effect: the psychological phenomenon of walking through life as if a spotlight is on us and other people are watching and judging us. — 00:05:14
  • ★★★ After a few weeks Ali realised that everyone in the pantomime was concerned with their own performance and wanted feedback, and no one was thinking about him. — 00:05:35
  • ★★★ To get out of his own head, Ali reminds himself that no one is judging him, since everyone is worried about their own performance; separating his sense of self from the role let him step into being the director. — 00:06:04
  • ★★ A junior doctor a week out of medical school has to step into the role of the doctor, Ali says: the patient is not judging them as an individual but thinking about themselves and wants them to do the job. — 00:06:35

  • ★★★ Overcoming imposter syndrome, Ali says, is a constant challenge of separating ourselves from our role and our feelings from what is happening, and recognising that no one cares about us, which he finds liberating. — 00:07:01

    “overcoming imposter syndrome is this constant challenge of separating ourselves from the role that we're playing”

00:07:13 — Sponsor read for Brilliant

  • ★★ Ali feels imposter syndrome very strongly about the book he is in the process of writing. — 00:07:59

00:08:12 — Story three: writing the book, and being a guide rather than a guru

  • ★★★ A few months before, an editor from Penguin UK approached Ali asking whether he was interested in writing a book about productivity. — 00:08:28
  • ★★ Ali's first reaction to Penguin UK's book offer was 'absolutely not': he thought he had nothing original to say about productivity and was only parroting the ideas of Tim Ferriss and David Allen in The 4-Hour Workweek and Getting Things Done. — 00:08:28 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
  • ★★★ After eight years chasing productivity, passive income and financial independence, Ali has reached the point where work is optional and has taken a break from medicine, and now asks what the point of being productive is. — 00:08:58 · passive income, work optional
  • ★★★ Ali realised that the question of the point of productivity, once work is optional, is one of the angles he wants to explore in his book. — 00:08:58 · work optional
  • ★★ Beyond how to get more done, Ali wants to know how to figure out what we want to get done, what is meaningful to us and what our purpose is, things he used to think a bit "woo woo". — 00:09:27
  • ★★ Ali told the writing coach helping him with his book that he did not see why anyone would listen to him, a 26-year-old who makes videos on the internet. — 00:09:27

  • ★★★ Ali's writing coach advised him, and he thinks about it almost every day, that you don't have to be a guru: you can be a guide. — 00:09:51

    “you don't have to be a guru. You can be a guide.”

  • ★★ A guru comes down from the mountain as the expert with all the answers, Ali explains; a guide is on the same journey as you and shows you what they have discovered so far. — 00:09:51

  • ★★ The guide-rather-than-guru framing has helped Ali overcome some of his imposter syndrome about writing the book. — 00:10:18
  • ★★ Ali approaches his book by exploring with the reader what others have written and what studies show about meaning, purpose and how productivity fits into figuring out what to do with our lives. — 00:10:18
  • ★★ Almost everyone in the Part-Time YouTuber Academy struggling to start or grow a channel has the same imposter syndrome: not being an expert, so not allowed to teach. — 00:10:48 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali reminds himself that you do not need to be an expert to teach: rather than pretending to be a guru, he can be a guide and help people go on the same journey he is on. — 00:11:19
  • ★★ For his book Ali has been reading many scientific papers and books about meaning, values, vision and purpose, which help him figure out what he wants to do with his life. — 00:11:19

00:12:08 — Mask emoji request, imposter syndrome about long videos, and sign-off

  • ★ Ali says his YouTube analytics show that most people watch only about 30% of his videos. — 00:12:17 · YouTube

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Addenbrooke's Hospital Pantomime · guide, not guru · obvious to you, amazing to others · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · spotlight effect

Also: People: David Allen · David Dobrik · Derek Sivers · MrBeast · Tim Ferriss · Will (student, mentioned from 2019)

Works: Getting Things Done · The 4-Hour Workweek

Organizations: Penguin UK · Think Media · University of Cambridge · Video Creators · YouTube

Concepts: passive income · work optional

Products: Zoom

Also centred on Addenbrooke's Hospital Pantomime: Clinical School Pantomime audition - Cambridge University medical student VLOG #11 · A Productive Day in the Life vlog

Also centred on guide, not guru: The Key to Success on YouTube · Reflecting On My Fears - Day in the Life

Also centred on obvious to you, amazing to others: 15 Lessons that Improved My Life · 5 Lessons I've Learned about Racism · The Key to Success on YouTube

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