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How to overcome the fear of getting started.

2023-02-04 · Livestream or live hangout · Ali · recording, 10:45 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Family, His medical past

In a livestream excerpt Ali splits the fear of getting started into social-anxiety fears, which he eases by seeing the fear as an evolved relic and by his "NOC mindset" (no one cares), and self-perception fears, which he answers by lowering the bar until he can act consistently; overthinking is fine as long as action never stops.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Two kinds of fear of getting started

  • ★★ Ali divides the fear of getting started with something into social-anxiety fears and self-perception fears. — 00:00:00

00:00:24 — Social anxiety: the evolved fear of disapproval, the best-friend thought experiment and the NOC mindset

  • ★★ What helped Ali against the fear of social disapproval was seeing where it comes from: humans were highly attuned to the judgment of their tribe, because being ostracised from it once meant death. — 00:00:50
  • ★★★ Understanding that his brain evolved to stop him putting himself out there for fear of what others think lets Ali ask whether that evolved behaviour is still useful to him. — 00:01:40
  • ★★ Nowadays, Ali says, the worst that happens when you put yourself out there, such as making a YouTube video or asking someone out, is not much: people laugh and it hurts inside, but survival is not at stake. — 00:02:25
  • ★★ Ali calls his brother Taimur a true visionary here: Taimur started a YouTube channel around 2009, posted random videos without seeming to care what others thought, while Ali cared much more. (hedged) — 00:02:56 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Most of us over-index on the fear of others' judgment, Ali says: asked whether you would judge your best friend for starting a podcast, you probably would not. — 00:03:24
  • ★★ Citing the Eleanor Roosevelt quote, Ali says we spend so much time worrying what other people think without realising they seldom think of us at all. — 00:04:04

  • ★★★ Ali calls it the NOC mindset, "no one cares": whenever fear of disapproval, judgment or rejection keeps him from starting something, he reminds himself that no one is thinking about him and he can just do the thing. — 00:04:55

    “I call it the NOC mindset, the sort of N-O-C, no one cares.”

  • ★★ When Ali started his YouTube channel, people at his medical school mostly shrugged and a few laughed; once it became successful, the same people asked to be in the thumbnail. — 00:05:21

00:05:48 — Self-perception: lower the bar, embrace the crap

  • ★★★ Against the self-perception fear of starting (self-doubt, fear of failure), Ali's strategy is to lower the bar, or embrace the crap: being afraid to start because we feel not good enough usually means the bar is way too high. — 00:05:48
  • ★★ About 2,000 students have gone through Ali's Part-Time YouTuber Academy, many of them complete beginners for whom the course was the push to start their channels; a new cohort launches in a few weeks. — 00:06:15 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
    • a number in question (doubtful): "like 90" — check against the recording
  • ★★ What kept many of his academy's students from starting YouTube channels, Ali says, was perfectionism, self-doubt or fear of failure, because their bar was so high. — 00:06:15 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ A new YouTuber who will not start because Ali's polished setup looks out of reach is, Ali says, like refusing to learn to drive because you cannot drive like Lewis Hamilton, which he calls completely dumb. — 00:06:55
  • ★★ Ali calls accepting that you will suck when you start a beginner's mindset and a growth mindset: it is okay to suck at the start. — 00:06:55 · growth mindset
  • ★★★ Whenever Ali procrastinates on something, it is usually because the bar is too high; when he struggles to get started, the solution is to lower the bar. — 00:06:55
  • ★★ Ali says he currently sucks at going to the gym, so he has lowered the bar: a win is just showing up and doing one exercise, sometimes a token session of bench press to failure. — 00:07:44

00:08:13 — Mustafa's question: get going, get good, get smart

  • ★★★ Asked how you improve if you lower the bar, Ali gives three levels, get going, get good and get smart: at level one you lower the bar, embrace the crap and aim only to get going. — 00:08:13
  • ★★★ Once you are already making a video every week, Ali says, you can raise the bar and try to get good; you have to recognise where you are on the journey of improvement at each particular thing. — 00:08:42
  • ★ Ali lowers the bar at the gym but raises it on his YouTube channel, since he already knows how to make a video and improves by making each one better. — 00:08:42

00:09:15 — Overthinking on a foundation of consistency

  • ★★★ Ali lets himself overthink as much as he likes as long as he is taking consistent action; overthinking becomes a problem only when it stops him acting. — 00:09:31
  • ★★ Ali credits his team member Tommy with a formula of analysis over action: whatever the ratio, action is never allowed to be zero. — 00:09:31

  • ★★★ Overthinking, Ali says, happens on a foundation of consistency: he overthinks his channel but is fine while he keeps publishing; if analysis becomes the foundation and action the cherry on top, you never get anywhere. — 00:10:13

    “So overthinking happens on a foundation of consistency.”

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): To a viewer who fears that what they want to achieve will never work out, the channel replies: so what if it does not work out? — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: embrace the suck · NOC mindset

Also: analysis paralysis · beginner mindset · Eleanor Roosevelt · get going, get good, get smart · growth mindset · Lewis Hamilton · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Taimur Abdaal

Only in the description or credits: Tommy

Also centred on embrace the suck: 21 Life Lessons I've Learned

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