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7 Life Lessons I Wish I Knew Sooner

2024-02-27 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 28:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Health, sleep and habits, Goals, purpose and life design, Business and entrepreneurship, Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, Lesson from a book, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Sponsor segment present

Ali shares seven lessons he wishes he had learned sooner: value headspace and focus on one thing, do the hard thing in the morning, choose your life's constraints and optimise work within them, be the last man standing, don't optimise the fun out of what you do, recognise dream moments, and know that only the journey, not the destination, brings happiness.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: seven life lessons from the last six months

00:00:09 — Lesson 1: the value of headspace; burnout during the book launch, one thing at a time

  • ★★ Feel-Good Productivity hit the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists, Ali's goal for the book, alongside his real goal of writing a book he is proud of. — 00:00:29 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ During the months of marketing his book, Ali felt burned out, which for him meant a sense of apathy, that it was all meaningless. — 00:00:58 · burnout
  • ★★ Ali says that, apparently, burnout in men tends on average to show as a sense that it is all meaningless, while in women it shows as emotional overwhelm or being drained of energy. (hedged) — 00:00:58 · burnout
  • ★★ Feel-Good Productivity was published on 28 December (2023), and on 4 January (2024) Ali learned it had hit the New York Times bestseller list; it felt like an enormous weight lifted. — 00:01:27 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ Marketing his book took Ali little time but a lot of headspace; once that weight lifted, he felt more excitement, joy, drive and ambition to grow the business and make videos. — 00:01:56 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ A few years earlier Ali sold a business that took little time but a lot of headspace; from the day he sold it, he could give more time and attention to growing his YouTube channel and its business. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali's one primary goal for his business is Productivity Lab, a productivity community with a waiting list. — 00:02:55
  • ★★★ Ali's first lesson: focus on one thing at a time and leave headspace and breathing room in your life, for that focus, a balanced life and taking breaks rather than burning out. — 00:02:55

  • ★★ Ali sums up the value of headspace and focus with a quote: you can have anything you want, but not everything you want. — 00:03:24

    “you can have anything you want, but not everything you want”

00:04:20 — Sponsor read for Headspace and its Feel-Good Productivity collection

  • ★★★ Ali's second lesson: wake up an hour earlier and do first the thing you find hard or struggle with. — 00:05:37

00:05:45 — Lesson 2: wake up earlier and do the hard thing in the morning; morning workouts

  • ★★ Dan Go (quoted): Dan Go, Ali's fitness coach, says he recommends morning workouts to anyone he coaches who struggles to work out, and that it works. — 00:06:07
  • ★★ At the annual planning session he ran in January for 12,000 attendees, Ali set himself the health goal of getting into the best shape of his life. — 00:06:07
  • ★ Ali was inspired by his friend Sahil Bloom, whose newly started YouTube channel shows him doing a cold plunge at four o'clock every morning. — 00:06:07
  • ★★★ For the last five weeks Ali has worked out four times a week in the mornings, at 7 or 8 a.m., with a personal trainer at his local gym; he has never been so consistent with working out. — 00:06:57
  • ★★ Since starting morning workouts, Ali has filmed more YouTube videos in three weeks than in the previous four months. — 00:06:57
  • ★★ Ali says that, back when he had a regular job and struggled to make videos or work on his business consistently, he should have woken an hour earlier for it: do the hard thing in the morning. — 00:07:26
  • ★★ Having to wake at 7:30, or 6:30 some days, for the gym forces Ali to sleep earlier, since he wants at least eight hours of sleep before a workout. — 00:08:05
  • ★★★ Ali's third lesson: choose the constraints of your life, then optimise your work within those constraints. — 00:08:35
  • ★ James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, got on a Zoom call with Ali a few months earlier to advise him on book marketing. — 00:08:35 · James Clear, Atomic Habits

00:08:46 — Lesson 3: define your constraints; James Clear's box, Parkinson's law, the two-hour thought experiment

  • ★★ James Clear (quoted): Asked by Ali why he does not launch an Atomic Habits course, James Clear said what works for him is to draw a box around the life he wants and optimise his work within that box. — 00:09:04 · James Clear, Atomic Habits
  • ★★ James Clear (quoted): James Clear told Ali that the happiest of the rich and famous authors he knows are those who draw constraints around the life they want and optimise their work within them. — 00:10:02 · James Clear
  • ★★ So far Ali has often made his life subordinate to his work, without much care for work-life balance. — 00:10:02
  • ★★★ Strategic imbalance is fine in some seasons of life, Ali says, but he is now in a season where more work achievements bring no further happiness. — 00:10:31
  • ★★★ Ali says the happiness and meaning in his life will now come from life rather than work: time with friends and family, getting married and having kids, what David Brooks calls the second mountain rather than the first mountain of material success. — 00:11:01
  • ★★ Ali defines a lifestyle business as a business that supports your life rather than the other way around. — 00:11:30 · lifestyle business
  • ★★★ Ali's advice to burned-out creators and entrepreneurs: define your constraints, such as how many hours a week you want to work, which hours, and how many holidays you want. — 00:11:59
  • ★★ Ali describes burnout as generally a mismatch between the demands of a job and the resources available for it, such as time, energy or people. — 00:11:59 · burnout
  • ★★★ Deciding to work only 20, 30 or 40 hours a week forces you to prioritise what moves the needle; without that constraint, creators, Ali included, do needless work, as Parkinson's law says work expands to fill the time allocated. — 00:12:28
  • ★★ Ali's thought experiment: if you could spend only two hours a week on your business or job, what would you do in them? Then ask why you are not spending 10 hours on just those things. — 00:12:58

00:13:20 — Plug for his free journalling hub

  • ★★★ Ali's fourth lesson: the success strategy everyone ignores is to be the last man standing. — 00:13:27

    “the success strategy that everyone ignores is last man standing”

00:13:45 — Lesson 4: last man standing; Ankur Warikoo, Peter Thiel, Warren Buffett

  • ★ Ali recently had lunch with Ankur Warikoo, an Indian YouTuber, entrepreneur, creator and author. — 00:13:56
  • ★★★ Ankur Warikoo (quoted): In over 20 years of running businesses, Ankur Warikoo has seen that the last man standing is often the winner: a business fails only if its founders quit, a YouTube channel only if its creator quits. — 00:14:25
  • ★★ Peter Thiel (quoted): Peter Thiel says something like: by far most of a business's value is generated 10 or more years after it was founded. (hedged) — 00:14:25
  • ★★ Startups and businesses often optimise for growth when they probably should optimise for durability and sustainability, Ali says: the last man standing is far more likely to win. (hedged) — 00:14:54
  • ★★ When Ali started his YouTube channel seven years earlier, he knew he needed to keep it up for at least two years and that interesting things would happen, without knowing what. — 00:14:54
  • ★★★ What Ali wishes an experienced elder had told him: the only thing that will make you fail is quitting; burning out and quitting is by far the biggest risk, so weather the ups and downs and keep going. — 00:15:24
  • ★★ When his business's numbers dip for a week, Ali reminds himself it plans to keep going for the next 30 years: the goal is to keep playing the game. — 00:16:18
  • ★★ For Ali's YouTube channel, business and books the goal is durability, to be the last man standing, though not as a gladiatorial contest: he does not think of competitors as competition. — 00:16:48
  • ★★ Ankur Warikoo (quoted): Asked about everyone starting channels and businesses during the pandemic, Ankur Warikoo said he did not care: nearly all of them would quit before seeing real traction, and his job is to run his own race and keep showing up. — 00:16:48
  • ★★ Citing Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money, Ali says you get rich investing by staying in the game longer than everyone else: Warren Buffett has invested since 13 and, at about 95, for 80 years. — 00:17:17
  • ★★ The first rule of investing, Ali says, is not to lose money, because losing it takes you out of the game; staying in long enough is what brings compounding growth. — 00:17:46
  • ★★ Putting all your money in crypto is probably a bad idea, Ali says, because it is high risk. (hedged) — 00:17:46

00:18:16 — Lesson 5: don't optimise the fun out of the game; World of Warcraft, Deep Dive, scripts

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth lesson comes from a game designer's line, quoted on a video-game essay channel, that resonated with him: left unchecked, players will optimise the fun out of the game they are playing. — 00:18:44

    “Left unchecked, players will optimize the fun out of the game they're playing.”

  • ★★ Ali optimised the fun out of World of Warcraft, grinding and min-maxing his level 80 warlock to take down the Lich King. — 00:18:44 · World of Warcraft

  • ★★★ Ali has run his podcast Deep Dive for two and a half years, with new viewer records every month, but realised he had optimised the fun out of it: it started as a hobby of interviewing cool people. — 00:19:14 · Deep Dive
  • ★★★ Ali has decided to dial down the optimisation of Deep Dive and deliberately de-optimise the podcast; he still wants to do interviews. — 00:19:59 · Deep Dive
  • ★★ Ali has tried writing word-for-word scripts and reading them off a teleprompter and finds it no fun; he prefers a few bullet points and speaking from the heart: less optimal, but more fun. — 00:20:57
  • ★★ At university, studying with friends around him was less optimal for Ali, being a little distracting, but far more fun than working alone in his room. — 00:20:57
  • ★★★ A certain level of optimisation is good, Ali says, but beyond the point where a thing stops being fun you are far more likely to burn out and quit. — 00:20:57
  • ★★ You cannot be the last man standing if you are not having fun, Ali says, because you cannot do something consistently for long enough without enjoying it. — 00:21:26
  • ★★★ Ali's sixth lesson: recognise dream moments, moments your previous self would have dreamed about, when they arise. — 00:21:26

00:21:48 — Lesson 6: recognise dream moments; Good Morning America, Tesla, his team, Cambridge talk

  • ★★★ In early January (2024) Ali was interviewed for three minutes on Good Morning America and spent it anxious and in his head, thrown by a question from George Stephanopoulos he had not prepared for. (hedged) — 00:21:55
  • ★★ In his head throughout the Good Morning America interview, Ali did not really feel the experience and failed to recognise a moment his previous self would have dreamed about. — 00:22:25
  • ★★ Whenever Ali gets into his Tesla Model 3, bought in 2020 with money from his YouTube channel, he reminds himself it is his dream car. — 00:22:54
  • ★★ Beyond material things, Ali counts as dream moments having lunch with entrepreneurs and authors he admires, such as Derek Sivers, Ryan Holiday or Noah Kagan. — 00:23:21 · Derek Sivers, Ryan Holiday, Noah Kagan
  • ★★ Ali's team is about 15 people he hired, helping him grow his business and the students and customers of his YouTuber Academy. — 00:23:51 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Giving a talk at Cambridge a few weeks earlier, Ali told the medical students that being medical students at Cambridge University is a dream moment for them. — 00:24:20 · University of Cambridge
  • ★★★ Amid exams, stress and complaining, Ali advises taking a few seconds to remember you are living the dream your previous self would only have dreamed of, and to appreciate it. — 00:24:49
  • ★★★ Ali's seventh lesson: destinations do not bring any happiness, only the journey does. — 00:24:49 · journey before destination

00:25:05 — Lesson 7: journey over destination; the New York Times list and the arrival fallacy

  • ★★ Mark Manson and Ryan Holiday told Ali that, with his first book, he would have the bestseller list as a goal, but when he hit it he would find it broadly meaningless. — 00:25:24 · Ryan Holiday
  • ★★★ When Ali got the call that he was a New York Times bestselling author, all he felt was relief that the work and marketing had paid off, lasting maybe a couple of hours; it has not made him any happier. — 00:25:53
  • ★★★ Ali, who bought into it early in his career, describes the arrival fallacy: the belief that arriving at a destination will make us happy; the joy of an accomplishment lasts a heartbeat compared with the journey. — 00:26:22

  • ★★★ Ali agrees with a friend's line that there is no achievement that will make you any happier than you are right now. — 00:26:51

    “there is no achievement you could possibly achieve that will make you any happier than you are right now”

  • ★★★ Setting goals is useful because it gives a direction, Ali says, but stay unattached from the outcome. — 00:26:51

  • ★★ When Ali took writing Feel-Good Productivity too seriously, his editor or agent reminded him of one of the book's tactics: be sincere rather than serious. — 00:27:50 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:28:20 — Plug for his series on feeling lost, sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: dream moments · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · last man standing

Also: People: Ankur Warikoo · Brian Tracy · Dan Go · David Brooks · Derek Sivers · George Stephanopoulos · James Clear · Mark Manson · Morgan Housel · Noah Kagan · Peter Thiel · Ryan Holiday · Sahil Bloom · Warren Buffett

Projects: Deep Dive · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Productivity Lab

Works: Atomic Habits · Good Morning America · The Psychology of Money · The Second Mountain

Organizations: The New York Times · The Sunday Times · University of Cambridge

Concepts: arrival fallacy · burnout · digital nomad · eat the frog · infinite game · journey before destination · lifestyle business · Parkinson's law · sincerity versus seriousness

Products: Tesla Model 3 · World of Warcraft

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