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How to Make Time for Everything (Then Actually Do It)

2025-06-18 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 25:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, Sponsor segment present, Family

Ali presents his free 168 Hours spreadsheet and argues from American Time Use Survey averages that an ordinary life already fills the week's 168 hours, so making time comes down to sacrifices; he shows how, as a full-time doctor in 2018, giving up cooking, chores, TV and most social media and double-dipping his commute left him about 31 free hours a week.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The 168 Hours spreadsheet and the plan of the video

  • ★★ Ali's free 168 Hours spreadsheet takes the minutes or hours you spend on life's basics and calculates how many of the week's 168 hours go to sleep, work, food and the rest. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali started a business while at medical school at Cambridge University and grew his YouTube channel to a million subscribers while working full time as a doctor in the UK. — 00:00:58 · University of Cambridge

00:01:26 — How the average American spends the 168 hours of a week

  • ★ According to the American Time Use Survey, Americans sleep about 8.7 hours a night on average. — 00:01:26
  • ★★ Ali says people generally spend about a third of their lives sleeping and around a third working, leaving about eight hours a day for everything else. — 00:02:54
  • ★★ The average American, according to the American Time Use Survey, spends 19 hours a week watching TV shows, movies and streaming, which Ali calls absolutely mental. — 00:04:23
  • ★★ Ali says 18-to-24-year-olds spend 5.1 hours a day on social media apps on their phones, which he calls staggering, like a whole full-time job. — 00:04:23
  • ★★★ Filling the 168 Hours spreadsheet with averages, Ali finds that the basic activities of the average American without children already use up all 168 hours of the week. — 00:05:17

00:05:47 — Sponsor read: Brilliant

00:06:58 — Childcare, social media and why there are physically not enough hours in the week

  • ★★ Adding average childcare of about two hours a day plus admin to the 168 Hours spreadsheet makes childcare at least 18 hours a week and leaves the week 18 hours overdrawn. — 00:07:15
  • ★★ The 168 Hours spreadsheet also has an ideal week view: fill in how you would ideally spend your 168 hours and it calculates the difference from your current week, showing where to make tweaks. — 00:07:15
  • ★★★ Ali's first key message: if you find it hard to make time for things on the side, such as an instrument, a language, a business or a YouTube channel, don't worry, since there are physically not enough hours in the week. — 00:08:43

00:09:12 — Same 168 hours, different allocations; his 2012 realisation at Cambridge and three ways to make time

  • ★★ Beyoncé and Elon Musk have the same 168 hours, Ali says, but people differ in how those hours are split between what they have to do and what they want to do; a single parent working two jobs looks very different. — 00:09:12
  • ★★★ To make time for everything, Ali says, start with your 168 hours: first work out where they go, then decide what to make more efficient and what to sacrifice for what you want to do. — 00:09:12
  • ★★ In 2012, in his first year of medical school at Cambridge University, Ali realised there were not enough hours in the day for his studies, sleep, friends, sport, dating and a side business. — 00:09:12 · University of Cambridge
  • ★ In 2012 Ali was spending maybe 15 hours a week watching TV shows such as Grey's Anatomy and The Vampire Diaries. (hedged) — 00:10:02
  • ★★ Around 2012, finding he lacked the hours, Ali started reading the productivity literature and researching how to be more productive and efficient. — 00:10:31
  • ★★★ Ali's three ways to make time: squeeze extra efficiency out of the things you have to do, strategically sacrifice some things, and double dip on some of the week's 168 hours. — 00:11:00

00:11:29 — His 168 hours as a full-time doctor in 2018: what he sacrificed and how he double-dipped

  • ★★ Working full time as a doctor from 2018, Ali would not sacrifice sleep: he kept sleeping about eight hours a night and cut his wind-down to about 15 minutes. — 00:11:29
  • ★★★ To build his YouTube channel and business beside his job as a doctor, Ali actively decided not to cook, living on ready meals, cafeteria sandwiches and takeaways. — 00:12:16
  • ★★ By not cooking, Ali spent only 2.7 hours a week on food as a junior doctor, which he says is drastically different from most people. — 00:12:45
  • ★★★ Ali is glad he sacrificed healthy eating and cooking, living off takeaways for about ten years to grind on his business, but says he is not telling anyone to do the same. — 00:13:21
  • ★ Ali tried meal-kit services such as HelloFresh as a junior doctor but found they took up too much time. — 00:13:21
  • ★★ Now that he has grown the business, Ali is all about healthy eating, Zone 2 cardio and longevity, partly to reverse the damage of sacrificing healthy eating in his 20s. — 00:14:07
  • ★★ A couple of months into his job as a doctor, Ali and his housemates got a cleaner to come every other week for two hours, and outsourcing cleaning cut his chore time a lot. — 00:14:34
  • ★★ Ali spent 1.4 hours a week on chores as a single junior doctor, about ten times less than the average US household's 15 hours a week. — 00:15:22
  • ★★★ Since starting university in 2012 Ali has kept a rule not to watch TV or movies unless with friends; as a full-time doctor he watched basically none, apart from Game of Thrones with friends. — 00:15:52 · Game of Thrones
  • ★ As a junior doctor Ali spent maybe an hour a day on social media apps, browsing Instagram and watching random YouTube videos. (hedged) — 00:16:21 · Instagram
  • ★★★ Working full time as a doctor, Ali had roughly 31.4 hours a week of free time, most of which went into growing his YouTube channel and his business. — 00:17:46
  • ★★ Ali says he was not very efficient with his free time as a junior doctor: he spent around 10 hours a week on his YouTube channel. — 00:17:46
  • ★★ As a junior doctor Ali was still running his business helping students get into medical school, which took a good chunk of his free time. — 00:17:46 · 6med
  • ★★★ Ali calls not watching TV and not going on social media apps one of the major hacks: it frees up a lot of time for most people. — 00:19:06
  • ★★★ Ali would not advise sacrificing healthy eating to make time. — 00:19:06
  • ★★ Ali wishes he had eaten more healthily as a junior doctor and expects his arteries are a little calcified from the bad food. (hedged) — 00:19:28
  • ★★ Ali does not at all regret watching basically no TV and spending only an hour a day on social media as a junior doctor. — 00:19:28
  • ★★★ Ali double dipped on his commute and lunch breaks as a doctor: on the drive to work he listened to audiobooks or podcasts, usually at two to three times speed, mostly business books and podcasts on growing a YouTube channel, about two hours most days. — 00:19:57
  • ★ On relaxed commutes Ali listened to fantasy: Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time and Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive. — 00:20:23 · The Wheel of Time, The Stormlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson
  • ★★ When he took lunch alone at the hospital, Ali would eat quickly and plan his next YouTube video on his iPad, ready to film at the weekend. — 00:20:47 · iPad

00:21:28 — Free time comes from sacrifices, not productivity; what kids would do to it

  • ★★★ With 30 hours a week to spend on something, Ali says, it is not that hard to get it making money and growing; four hours a week instead makes a massive difference. — 00:21:28
  • ★★★ Ali says his schedule as a doctor was not that productive: he simply chose to sacrifice certain things, so he had more free time than people with other choices or obligations. — 00:21:57
  • ★★ With kids, Ali's 31 free hours would drop to six as 25 hours a week went to childcare; he says productivity videos are mostly made by people without kids and rarely mention this. — 00:22:38
  • ★★ Ali is about to have a child; reading books about it and watching friends who are parents, he is realising how much effort childcare takes. — 00:22:38

00:23:07 — Final thoughts: making time for everything comes down to sacrifices

  • ★★ To make time, Ali says, look at where you currently spend your 168 hours, either by a formal time audit tracking all your time or by a rough guess. — 00:23:07
  • ★★★ Making time comes down to sacrifices, Ali says: a healthy, balanced life alone fills the week's 168 hours, so starting a business, a side hustle or art beside a full-time job means something has to give. — 00:23:36
  • ★★★ On what to sacrifice for time, Ali would not recommend healthy eating, sleep or time with your kids or spouse; entertainment, TV and social media scrolling you could probably give up. — 00:24:23
  • ★★ If you can afford to go part-time at work, Ali says, that frees up a lot of time. — 00:24:23
  • ★★ With enough savings to take care of money, Ali says, you can quit your job and free up about 60 hours a week. — 00:24:52
  • ★ Some of Ali's friends spend 24 hours a week watching TV and 24 on social media and do not want to do anything else. — 00:24:52
  • ★★ Choosing to make no sacrifices for other goals is totally fine, Ali says: you can choose exactly how to spend your 168 hours. — 00:25:22

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali says that around 2018, working as a doctor, he had no assistants apart from a cleaner two hours every two weeks; his first team member came in late 2019 and helped accelerate the business. — creator comment
  • ★★ If you can afford to hire people to do things, Ali says, that is another way to save an enormous amount of time. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked about family wealth, Ali says he had a single mum working full time as a doctor in the UK: the basics were covered, but there was no family wealth beyond that. — creator comment
  • ★★ Seven years after his time as a full-time doctor, Ali has a team of about ten people, which he left out of the video as unfeasible for most people. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali calls using your golden hours of focus for important work another very useful part of time efficiency, a tip he forgot to include in the video. — creator comment
  • ★ Asked for more study videos, Ali says that is probably not going to happen, since he has not had to study in the traditional sense since 2019. (hedged) — creator comment
  • ★ Ali uses the Arc web browser (2025). — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: American Time Use Survey · time stacking

Also: People: Beyoncé · Brandon Sanderson · Elon Musk · Robert Jordan

Works: Game of Thrones · Grey's Anatomy · The Stormlight Archive · The Vampire Diaries · The Wheel of Time

Organizations: 6med · HelloFresh · Instagram · University of Cambridge

Concepts: social media · Trident calendar system · Zone 2 cardio

Products: ChatGPT · Claude · iPad

Only in the description or credits: Arc · golden hours

Also centred on time stacking: How to Build a Business Part-Time

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