Skip to content

i wasted the last 6 months of my life…

2021-02-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, David Moldawer · recording, 18:40 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Productivity and time) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own products discussed, Lesson from a book

Ali tells how his first book stalled: a 2,000-words-a-day challenge broke after a week, and American editors, among them David Moldawer, judged his 30,000-word proposal not very good, so he is reworking the concept; his writing coach Azul's reminder to have fun, and playing sincerely rather than seriously, got him back on track.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — How the book began: a UK editor's approach in summer 2020 and the book proposal

  • ★★★ In summer 2020 an editor from a UK publishing house approached Ali asking whether he wanted to write a book about productivity, and Ali agreed. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali finds a book proposal hard to write: it lays out the book's concept and every chapter, so you have to act as if you have the whole book figured out, while his was still a loose idea. — 00:00:36

00:01:06 — 2,000 words a day from January 2021, the stall on day eight, failing with abandon

  • ★ Ali says a standard non-fiction book is about 65,000 to 80,000 words. — 00:01:06
  • ★★★ At the start of January 2021, thinking himself a fast typist, Ali decided he could write 2,000 words of his book a day and announced it on Twitter and his email newsletter, and he thinks on Instagram too. — 00:01:30 · Twitter, Instagram
  • ★★ For the first seven days of 2021 Ali wrote 2,000 words a day; after about 14,000 words he realised it is quite hard to write 2,000 words a day that mean something. — 00:01:30
  • ★★ Ali passes on the usual writing advice: do not worry about quality, focus on quantity at first, because a rough first draft is supposed to be really messy. — 00:01:54
  • ★★ Every author Ali spoke to told him that every author thinks their first draft is crap, that good writing is about rewriting many times, and that the magic happens in the edit. — 00:02:23
  • ★★★ On day eight of his 2,000-words-a-day challenge Ali was busy, made no time for writing and wrote zero words; the next day, having failed his word count, he did not bother either. — 00:02:54

  • ★★★ Ali calls "failing with abandon" the trap many of us fall into: after one lapse we give up entirely, so one wasted hour of a Netflix show becomes bingeing the whole season. — 00:02:54 · Netflix

    “that I like to call failing with abandon”

  • ★★ Failing with abandon is what Ali did with writing his book: missing the 2,000-word count stalled his progress. — 00:02:54

00:03:37 — Daily Zoom write-with-me co-working sessions

  • ★★★ To get his book writing going again, Ali set up free daily Zoom "write with me" co-working sessions, with a hundred-odd and sometimes 200 or 300 people from around the world; he plays his Spotify study playlist of instrumentals from The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, and they use the Pomodoro technique. — 00:03:37 · Zoom, Spotify, Harry Potter (book series), Pomodoro technique
  • ★★ The daily co-working sessions at 10 a.m., with 100 people on their webcams doing their own work, are a good, somewhat social way for Ali to force himself to write during lockdown, when he sees only his housemate. — 00:04:07

00:04:36 — The 30,000-word proposal and the American editors' verdict

  • ★★★ Two or three weeks before this video Ali's book proposal reached a state he was happy with: a broad book on meaningful productivity and what makes a life meaningful, as a 30,000-word, 80-page document. — 00:04:36
  • ★ Ali's book proposal went back and forth with his editor, who added many bits and made it sound really good. — 00:04:36
  • ★★★ Hoping for a US book deal, Ali sent his book proposal to editors in America he knows through friends and internet colleagues; all of them said it was not very good and still needed a lot of work, a real blow to him. — 00:05:46 · United States

00:06:10 — David Moldawer's feedback on the proposal

  • ★★★ David Moldawer tells Ali that his videos excite him, but the book proposal will not stand apart for its content: Ali has not yet figured out what the book is. — 00:06:10
  • ★★ David Moldawer warns Ali that if his book becomes one people constantly recommend to each other, as with Atomic Habits, he will be haunted by it for good or ill for the rest of his life. — 00:06:50 · Atomic Habits
  • ★★ David Moldawer says that Digital Minimalism did okay, but Cal Newport is the Deep Work guy forever, and Tim Ferriss will tell you he is the four-hour guy. — 00:06:50 · Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ David Moldawer passes on Dan Pink's saying that you write a book for two years and then talk about it for two years. — 00:07:35
  • ★★ David Moldawer advises first figuring out what the book's one thing is and building everything out from it, rather than throwing all the spaghetti at the wall for readers to find what is useful. — 00:07:35

00:08:12 — Starting again, stress and resentment towards the book

  • ★★★ Ali takes David Moldawer's constructive criticism to mean he must throw out the book proposal, start again and rework the concept from the ground up; many others said the same that week. — 00:08:12
  • ★ Ali calls the setback with his book a first-world problem: his life is still very privileged and very good. — 00:08:41
  • ★★ Ali makes a point of never saying he is stressed by anything: his are first-world problems, and people working on the front lines of the pandemic are under real stress. — 00:09:10 · COVID-19
  • ★★ Facing six months of book work thrown out, Ali felt negativity and resentment towards the book, asking why he took it on and how he was qualified to write a book about productivity. — 00:09:40
  • ★★ Ali sees a danger in working on something alone without outside feedback: you hype yourself up into thinking it is good, and then people say it is pretty crap. — 00:09:40

00:10:23 — Azul's reminder to have fun; fun lies in how we approach things; the hospital cleaners

  • ★★ Ali's writing coach Azul, introduced to him by Pat Flynn of the Smart Passive Income podcast, has worked with him for months, helping him past his fear of self-promotion in writing. — 00:10:23
  • ★★★ On a call, Ali's writing coach Azul reminded him that he was supposed to be having fun writing the book and did not sound like he was; Ali agreed, and it changed his approach. — 00:11:01
  • ★★★ Ali's mantra throughout life is journey before destination: more important than setting and achieving ambitious goals is enjoying the journey and the process of doing them. — 00:11:01 · journey before destination
  • ★★ Ali says that if you enjoy the things you are doing, chances are you will become more successful at them. — 00:11:01
  • ★★★ Asked how he is so productive, Ali says the real answer is that it never feels like work, because for the most part it is really fun. — 00:11:01
  • ★★ Ali has always found school, medical school, working as a doctor, his YouTube channel and his side businesses really fun, and writing his book started off really fun too. — 00:11:42
  • ★★★ Ali says finding something fun is much more about how we approach it than about whether the thing itself is fun: he sometimes genuinely enjoys doing dishes or laundry because of the story he tells himself about it. — 00:11:42
  • ★★ Ali cites a study in which a researcher interviewed hospital cleaners: those who treated the job as a calling, seeing that they made life easier for patients, found more meaning, performed better, had more fun and were happier. — 00:12:36

00:13:05 — Sincerity versus seriousness, and the New York Times bestseller fixation

  • ★★★ Thinking of life as a game, Ali says we can play it seriously or sincerely: playing sincerely means doing your best and trying to win while recognising it is a game, never letting the drive spoil your own or others' enjoyment. — 00:13:05
  • ★★ Ali treated exams at school and medical school as a game he tried his best to play and win, but never took so seriously that it affected his emotional wellbeing. — 00:13:52
  • ★★★ After Azul's reminder Ali realised he had been taking his book too seriously, fixated on it being really good and, he admits with shame, on it becoming a New York Times bestseller. — 00:13:52
  • ★★ Ali calls getting a book on the New York Times bestseller list an arbitrary goal that is really hard to reach and largely dependent on factors outside our control. — 00:14:34
  • ★★★ Ali is normally not a fan of goals for things outside his control: for his YouTube channel he sets no subscriber, views or revenue goal, only producing two videos a week, which is within his control. — 00:14:34
  • ★★ For his book Ali broke his usual way of working and wanted a New York Times bestseller; the fixation on that outcome kept him lying awake at night. — 00:15:00

00:15:29 — The all is lost moment, back to the drawing board, writing the book for fun

  • ★★★ Ali is going back to the drawing board with the concept of his book: it might stay close to the proposal, but he suspects it will change quite a lot. (hedged) — 00:15:29
  • ★★ Steven Pressfield (quoted): In The Artist's Journey, Steven Pressfield says any artistic endeavour, such as writing a book, reaches an all is lost moment, after which it is only up, and in hindsight you are glad things did not work out at the start. — 00:15:58
  • ★★ The American editors' feedback that his book proposal more or less sucked felt to Ali like his all is lost moment. — 00:15:58 · United States
  • ★★ Ali now feels quite optimistic about his book, still early in the process, and is glad he did not write more of it or send it to publishers in America and Canada in its current state. — 00:15:58 · United States
  • ★★ Someone told Ali that he would write his book for two years, promote it for the next five and live with it for the rest of his life, so he should ask what book he wants to write. — 00:16:27
  • ★★ Ali realised that, focused on getting words onto the page for the original proposal, his book had become one he felt compelled to write rather than one he wanted to write, and it did not feel like him. — 00:16:55
  • ★★★ Ali is excited to throw out the last six months of work on his book, some of which may prove useful; he thinks all that work was necessary to reach the point of starting again. — 00:16:55
  • ★★★ Ali is writing his book to have fun, not to make money or become famous: it feels like an adventure and a challenge. — 00:17:20
  • ★★ Ali expects that ten years from now he would regret not writing his book rather than regret writing it. (hedged) — 00:17:20
  • ★★★ When his book work feels like it sucks, Ali reminds himself it is supposed to be fun, steps back, detaches from the outcome, avoids fixating on the New York Times bestseller list and stays sincere rather than serious. — 00:17:45
  • ★★ Ali's newsletter on writing his book is called Ali's Book Journey: an update email every few weeks, and perhaps chapters sent for feedback as he writes them. — 00:17:45

00:18:21 — The 2021 resolutions video and sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: David Moldawer · failing with abandon · sincerity versus seriousness

Also: People: Azul · Cal Newport · Daniel Pink · Pat Flynn · Steven Pressfield · Tim Ferriss

Works: Atomic Habits · Deep Work (book) · Digital Minimalism · Harry Potter (book series) · Smart Passive Income · The Artist's Journey · The Lord of the Rings

Organizations: Gymshark · Instagram · Netflix · Twitter

Concepts: all is lost moment · COVID-19 · how hard can it be? · journey before destination · Pomodoro technique

Places: Canada · United States

Products: Spotify · Zoom

Replies to

Replied to by

← Previous: I Slept With My Mouth Taped Shut for 30 Days · Next → Brandon Sanderson on Writing, Storytelling and Fantasy Books