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7 Life Lessons I Know at 30 But Wish I Knew at 20

2024-05-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 34:12 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Mindset, motivation and happiness, Health, sleep and habits, Medicine and his doctor years, Goals, purpose and life design, Money and investing) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own numbers, His own products discussed, His medical past, Sponsor segment present, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Lesson from a book

Turning 30, Ali replays a clip from one of his videos for each year from 2017 to 2023 and reacts: have a bias to action, enjoy the process (5.5 million subscribers and becoming a millionaire changed little), remove friction, design your life from scratch, keep few projects and goals, and accept leaving money on the table; he now makes videos only when he feels like it.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — I turned 30: rewinding to 2017

  • ★★ Ali has just turned 30 and, to celebrate, shares and reacts to seven life lessons from his seven years on YouTube. — 00:00:00

00:00:30 — 2017 clip: why am I vlogging

00:02:12 — 2017: have a bias to action and just do the thing

  • ★★ Ali made his first vlog in June 2017, when his YouTube channel had maybe 35 subscribers. (hedged) — 00:02:12
  • ★★★ When Ali thought of starting a vlog in 2017, his first thoughts were that he lacked the right equipment, needed practice and that nobody would care; with a bias to action he ignored them, lay on his bed and turned his phone on himself. — 00:02:35
  • ★★ Ali credits the vlogging habit he started in 2017 with building up to over 800 videos on his channel in seven or eight years. — 00:03:02
  • ★★★ In the early stages of a project, especially something new, Ali says there is a lot of value in just getting started and doing the thing; the strategy can come later. — 00:03:25
  • ★★ As his channel and business grew, Ali says he lost some of his bias to action and got too much in his head, overthinking things. — 00:03:25
  • ★★★ Ali says all his business's best products came from an idea executed within a few days: the first cohort of the YouTuber Academy, the latest productivity course, and much of his book Feel-Good Productivity, written in bursts of intensity. — 00:03:54 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali values the attitude he had when starting his vlog: even if it failed it would be worth it, because it would flex his creative muscles and teach him to edit videos. — 00:04:19

00:04:58 — 2018 clip: what is life like post 5K, it's about the climb

00:06:48 — 2018: enjoy the journey at 5.5 million subscribers; enjoyment is efficiency

  • ★★ Ali's YouTube channel has just crossed 5.5 million subscribers. — 00:07:01
  • ★★★ Ali says 5.5 million subscribers does not feel radically different from 5,000, because he still focuses on enjoying the process, the feel-good productivity angle. — 00:07:28 · feel-good productivity (concept), Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali now has a team and more money, and has become a millionaire thanks to his YouTube channel and the business around it. — 00:07:28
  • ★★★ Like David Heinemeier Hansson in The Day I Became a Millionaire, Ali found that becoming a millionaire doesn't really change anything: what he enjoys is friends and family, reading, talking to interesting people, and making videos and giving talks now and then. — 00:07:56
  • ★★ Becoming a millionaire let Ali quit his day job as a doctor and spend all his time on work he enjoys more, though he says he also enjoys being a doctor. — 00:07:56

  • ★★★ Ali says it all comes down to focusing on enjoying the process: enjoyment is efficiency, and when you enjoy the process the scoreboard takes care of itself. — 00:08:24

    “Enjoyment is efficiency.”

00:08:35 — Morning Brew sponsor read

00:09:40 — 2019 clip: The Psychology of Passive Barriers

00:12:36 — 2019: remove passive barriers; friction, Opal and sleep

  • ★★★ Ali often thinks that friction is the most powerful force in the universe: removing friction from what you want to do and adding it to what you don't is a profoundly useful way to nudge your behaviour. — 00:12:36 · friction

    “friction is the most powerful force in the universe”

  • ★★★ Browsing YouTube at night kept Ali from sleeping on time, so he downloaded Opal, which he calls really good, to block YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and Twitter on his phone after 9 p.m. and before 9 a.m. — 00:13:05

  • ★★ Ali says the barrier on his phone changed the quality of his sleep, because he no longer scrolls social media at night. — 00:13:40
  • ★★★ To change a behaviour, Ali asks what system he can put in place to make the change easier, instead of telling himself he just needs to make it, which he says basically never happens. — 00:13:40

00:13:58 — Free 20 lessons email course

00:14:33 — 2020 clip: not how I would choose to spend the rest of my life

00:16:40 — 2020: design your life intentionally

  • ★★ Around 2020 Ali asked himself what he would choose to do if he could design his life from scratch, and realised that, though he enjoyed being a doctor, it was not that. — 00:16:42
  • ★★★ On his final day as a doctor (6 August 2020) Ali planned one year out of medicine, perhaps a gap year doing emergency medicine in Australia; COVID closed Australia's borders and he accidentally became a full-time YouTuber. — 00:17:09 · COVID-19
  • ★★★ Ali suggests asking whether the way you have spent your time over the last six months is how you would like to spend it for the rest of your life; if not, something should probably change. (hedged) — 00:17:33
  • ★★★ Ali, who now films one day a week, works with a team partly in person, builds businesses and writes a book now and then, says this is how he would choose to spend the rest of his life. — 00:17:33
  • ★★ Ali wants to get married and have kids, which will change things, and he may leave the UK to live somewhere else. (hedged) — 00:18:02
  • ★★★ Ali asks viewers how different a life designed completely from scratch would look from the one they live now, and what they can do to bridge the gap. — 00:18:32
  • ★★ The work life Ali wants, and has slowly built over eight years on YouTube, lets him choose whether to go to an office with his team and spend his time reading, writing, learning, teaching and building things with a team partly in person. — 00:19:14

00:19:39 — 2021 clip: Azul says you're supposed to be having fun writing this book

  • ★★★ In February 2021, in lockdown, Ali had spent six months on his book proposal only to hear from several people that it was not good; now Feel-Good Productivity is out and a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller. — 00:21:56 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:21:58 — 2021: enjoy the journey 2; what would this look like if it were fun

  • ★★★ Ali made the most progress on his book when he focused on enjoying the process; his lessons of eight years all converge on the journey being the destination: enjoying the process brings better results than chasing results. — 00:22:28 · journey before destination, Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Writing Feel-Good Productivity, Ali kept forgetting this lesson: the first draft and the editing each began fun, then turned serious and heavy; he made progress when the process was enjoyable and stalled when it was not. — 00:23:02 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Even having written a book about it, Ali says he has not fully learned that feeling good makes you more productive and makes your whole life better. — 00:23:30 · feel-good productivity (concept)

  • ★★★ Where society says to work harder when something is hard, Ali advises asking "What would this look like if it were fun?", a question he keeps as his phone wallpaper. — 00:23:59

    “what would this look like if it were fun?”

00:24:33 — 2022 clip: five plus or minus two projects

00:25:30 — 2022: less is more

  • ★★★ In 2022 Ali's business had an office and studio in London, a one-year experiment; he went back to filming from his house because the office was expensive. — 00:25:33 · London
  • ★★ One of Ali's dreams, a project for the next five to ten years, is his own co-working space: a team office with a podcast and YouTube production studio, a coffee shop, a library and a gym in one building. — 00:25:33
  • ★★ Ali prefers the flexibility and freedom of shooting from his house to the expense of an extra office; his team now uses WeWork all-access passes. — 00:26:17
  • ★★★ Ali's 2022 energy investment portfolio was his turning point to less is more; he still uses a variation of it: a long list of things he would like to do and a very short list of what he is actively doing. — 00:26:17 · energy investment portfolio
  • ★★★ Ali's goal-setting system has three to five goals: with that many he makes progress on a reasonable number of them, while more means nothing really gets done and is a recipe for burnout. — 00:26:17
  • ★★ The day before this video Ali recorded a podcast conversation with Cal Newport, author of Slow Productivity, which Ali calls great; Newport has researched people such as Jane Austen, John McPhee, Galileo and Marie Curie. — 00:26:56 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ Ali completely agrees with Cal Newport's point that you want a small number of projects active at any given time. — 00:27:25 · Cal Newport
  • ★★ The day before this video Ali gave a class for Productivity Lab, where many members were struggling with trying to juggle too many things. — 00:27:25
  • ★★★ Ali calls being able to have it all a bit of a myth: the fewer active things you work on at once, the more progress you make, the calmer your life and the more you can enjoy the process. — 00:27:50 · feel-good productivity (concept)

00:28:08 — 2023 clip: more money or more enjoyment

00:28:58 — 2023: it's okay to leave money on the table

  • ★★★ With a few single-digit millions in the bank, Ali was still tempted to chase more money to feel secure with double digits; over the last six months he has come round to being okay with leaving money on the table. — 00:29:33 · leave money on the table
  • ★★ At recent talks a surprisingly large number of long-time followers told Ali his early videos felt from the heart, the middle period felt click-baity and over-optimised, and the last few months feel like the old Ali again. — 00:29:55

00:30:44 — Making videos only when he feels like it; playing with house money

  • ★★★ Ali says that from about 2020 to 2023, with a bigger team, more expenses, lots of sponsored videos and constant course plugs, he made YouTube videos for the business and the money rather than because he enjoyed it. (hedged) — 00:30:44
  • ★★★ Having realised he has enough, Ali says he will focus on enjoying the process and make YouTube videos only when he feels like it, as with this one. — 00:31:12
  • ★★★ Making videos now feels to Ali like playing with house money: he makes the videos he wants when he has a valuable message and doesn't care too much how they perform; his team cares, and that is okay. — 00:32:15
  • ★★★ Ali's realisation that he has enough, and always has had, came after a period of burnout and a friend's health scare; when he focused on enjoying the process rather than making more money, he ironically made more money. — 00:32:44

00:33:11 — What video would you like to see next

  • ★★★ The desire for more money, status, accolades and career progression often costs you enjoyment, Ali says, while if you focus on enjoyment you'll probably get the other things anyway and be far happier. (hedged) — 00:33:11
  • ★★ Ali would much rather hear from viewers which videos they want than from YouTube Studio analytics: knowing people want a video makes it more fun to make. — 00:33:33

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: bias to action · feel-good productivity (concept) · friction · leave money on the table

Also: People: Azul (coach, mentioned from 2021) · Cal Newport · Casey Neistat · David Heinemeier Hansson · Galileo Galilei · James Clear · Jane Austen · Jeff Bezos · John McPhee · Marie Curie (scientist) · Miley Cyrus · Pat Flynn · Ramit Sethi · Tim Ferriss

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy · Productivity Lab

Works: Atomic Habits · BMAT · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Get Rich Slowly · I Will Teach You To Be Rich · Slow Productivity · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Day I Became a Millionaire · The Psychology of Passive Barriers

Organizations: Addenbrooke's Hospital · Amazon · Basecamp · NHS · The New York Times · The Sunday Times · WeWork

Concepts: COVID-19 · Emergency medicine · energy investment portfolio · Gap year · journey before destination · working memory

Places: Australia · Cambodia · Cambridge · London

Products: Opal · YouTube Studio

Also centred on bias to action: If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This

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