Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal

Ali Abdaal is a first in his class Cambridge graduate who is an expert in productivity and getting the most out of your life. He finished top of his year at Cambridge, but he wasn’t content with mastering productivity in one field. As well as being a full time student, he built a multi-million dollar business, as well as a youtube channel with over two million subscribers. Ali manages to squeeze every moment from his day. Yet when you listen to this, you’ll see that the techniques he uses to do this are really simple. He’s learnt them through hard-fought experience, and today he’s willing to share them with us. Ali has been a qualified doctor now for three years, and still practices medicine part-time. But he’s spread his wings and still runs his businesses and courses on the side. With so much he packs into his life, Ali is quite simply the best out there at helping you to maximise your productive potential. Today, he opens up like never before to reveal exactly how he does it all, and how you can too. Follow Ali: YouTube - www.youtube.com/@aliabdaal Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aliabdaal Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  Ali Abdaal, he is a creator, he is an entrepreneur who came first at Cambridge, and he is a productivity expert.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  The way that I define productivity is just kind of using my time well and working on things that are meaningful to me and optimizing for happiness. I feel unproductive when I know there is something I want to do and I am not doing the thing because I'm scrolling Instagram. Procrastination is a problem with getting started. And so the key to overcoming procrastination is that little nudge at the start towards actually getting started. There are a few hacks. The one that I use all the time is the two-minute rule. Two minutes is all you need to change your life. The way I try and remind myself of this point of I am enough is thinking and really trying to internalize that the journey is more important than the destination. We do need a destination, but really like, am I enjoying myself day to day? And am I kind of living the dream, as it were, day to day and not so much worrying

• 0:53Speaker 01

  about the goal at the end of it?

• 1:03Steven Bartlett?

  Productivity, procrastination, two things that all people aspiring to success, or really aspiring to get anything done, often struggle with. Today, we're going to try and solve that problem. Today, I'm joined by Ali Abdaal. He is a creator on YouTube. He's got millions and millions of subscribers. He is an entrepreneur. He's a Cambridge graduate who came first at Cambridge, and he is a productivity expert. And honestly, he's read more books than anyone I think I've ever met on the subject, but generally about how to become the best version of yourself. This conversation isn't just about productivity and procrastination. It ends up twisting and turning through a bunch of different topics like relationships and friendships and the meaning of life and happiness.

• 1:49Steven Bartlett?

  But what else would you expect from this podcast? You're going to enjoy this conversation. Ali is an incredibly intelligent, intellectual, compassionate, self-aware individual, and he's able to talk in a way that simplifies complex ideas for people like me and you. So without further ado, my name is Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 2:23Steven Bartlett?

  I really start here with all my guests because I think it's so foundational to everything that they then say they're after is getting a bit of context as to who you are, where you came from and the environment in which Ali was created.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting question. Okay, so I was born in Karachi in Pakistan in 1994. So I'm 27 now. And when I was two years old, my mom and dad divorced and my mom moved us to Lesotho in Southern Africa. It's a country most people haven't heard of. It's surrounded by South Africa, like landlocked by South Africa. And we were there for about five, six years growing up. At that point, you know, my mom really valued education. She was working as a doctor and she knew the educational opportunities in Southern Africa in Lesotho were not great. And so we made a plan to move to the UK. So we came to the UK in 2003. She started working here as a doctor and we moved around a little bit in different areas in the UK. And it was really in secondary

• 3:19Speaker 01

  school that I did in South Endonsee Essex, where I discovered kind of entrepreneurship and the internet and computers and stuff. And basically, all throughout school, I'd be the kid getting like decent grades and everything like that. But the thing I like, I would, I would look forward to going home so that I could do some more coding or tinker on some websites, or try and shill my services as a freelance graphic designer or something for $5 here and there. And I was making kind of, you know, a little bit of money. I lied about my age on PayPal. I pretended I was 18 when I was actually like 13. And I was getting like $5, $10 from these small businesses here and there and thinking, oh, my God, I'm making money on the internet. This is incredible. And then as I went through school, me and my friends, we were all quite interested in the entrepreneurship stuff.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  We were all, we were doing like well in school. And I was like, oh, it would be cool to go to Oxford or Cambridge, would be cool to do medicine. But really, my passion at the time was going home and tinkering with websites. And so that was kind of the environment that I grew up in. Then when I went to university, you know, thankfully, I got a place for medicine at Cambridge, which was great, awesome experience.

• 4:24Steven Bartlett?

  Just on that point there. So you were tinkering on websites and loving it. That's the thing you were like running home from school to do.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:31Steven Bartlett?

  But then you go for medicine. What was the driving force behind you deciding not to do the tinkering on websites for a living and going and doing medicine? I mean, you said there that your mother was a doctor.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think when you grow up in the sort of environment that I did whereby Parents are doctors, all of my mom's friends were doctors, everyone we knew had like doctor parents. There are so few viable careers where you think, you know, what are my, what are my job options in life? Well, it's either doctor or lawyer or engineer. Like, it's literally just those three. You don't even realise that other jobs even exist. Not in like a, a way where the parents are telling you this consciously, but more like just the narrative that you absorb from the people you're around is that I could be a doctor or engineer or a lawyer. And so that was always in the back of my mind that, oh, it would be cool to be a doctor one day. And when I was around 16, I-

• 5:17Steven Bartlett?

  Can I ask why?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  I think because doctor seemed like a prestigious thing. And I think, I, I remember even when I was like six and seven, when people used to ask me what I would want to be when I was older, I used to say either a neurosurgeon or a gastroenterologist, not even knowing what that meant, but it was just like a big word that would make me feel cool that, oh, yeah. And then the adults that I would speak to would be like, oh, hello, fancy.

• 5:41Steven Bartlett?

  So that in and of itself-

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:42Steven Bartlett?

  Where does prestige exist? One would assume that it exists in the mind of others. Like, do you know what I mean? Like-

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:48Steven Bartlett?

  So that's why, if you'd said to me, I really want to save people's lives, I would really had a high desire to like, save lives and to do that, then I'd be like, okay, that's the voice inside. But when, when it's like status, then it's-

• 6:00Speaker 01

  It was very much status and prestige. And that's the thing that I think about to this day, a lot about like, now that I've taken a break from medicine, you know, often if I'm, if I'm having conversations with my mom, the, she'll try and talk me back into doing medicine again.

• 6:16Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  And one of her kind of bargaining chips on that front is, oh, but think about the prestige, you know, medicine has a certain prestige around it that being a YouTuber doesn't. And that's always like, oh, you know, it's that, that side of me that's like, well, I want to carve my own path. I don't, I don't care about status and, and status and prestige. And then there's the other half where it's still like a, kind of a narrative going through my life that I need to optimize for, like this sort of old world prestige.

• 6:42Steven Bartlett?

  Instead of happiness?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Instead of happiness, yeah.

• 6:44Steven Bartlett?

  Which is bizarre, isn't it?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  It's completely bizarre. Yeah, this is a, I was-

• 6:49Steven Bartlett?

  Strange, like, it's a cultural thing as well, largely, I think with, I think with, you know, my mom dropped out of school when she was seven years old. So doctor, lawyer, anything with prestige was the correct answer.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:03Steven Bartlett?

  Maybe that's because, and this is me just guessing out loud, when you come from, when you're an immigrant family- One of the actual biggest predictors of happiness was financial security. And being a doctor, I was like, maybe.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think that's a big part of it, where with my, with our, with our parents' generation, especially, especially as immigrants.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Seeing other people who are happy correlated with other people who had like a big house and like a nice cars and were going on holidays. Equals financial success equals, oh, those people did well in their traditional career of banking or medicine or engineer or law. And the narrative of like someone like you, entrepreneur, social media, big company, that it just didn't, it just wasn't really a thing in our parents' generation.

• 7:49Steven Bartlett?

  And you said they're like going on holidays, da, da, da, da, da. But I think if, go back to my, like the village in Nigeria where my mum's from. Having a good job was actually like survival. It was like being able to eat. It was like much more just much lower things on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It was just like being able to survive. And then not having a job and an education was like pain from food, no healthcare, no education. Whereas in, as you say, like in the Western world, when you grew up here, yeah, it means Lamborghini and holiday and stuff, but. So you take that, you take that decision anyway, driven by your, by an external narrative to go and become a doctor.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  External, I think there was also partly an internal narrative, and I'm not sure how much of this is me just bullshitting myself, but. When I was 16, I decide, I made a conscious decision, do I want to do computer science and do the tinkering websites thing? Or do I want to do medicine? I think what I reasoned at the time was, was two things. Number one, medicine is six years at university, computer science is only three. Everyone says university is great. Ergo, six years is better than three years, therefore medicine makes sense. But the other thing that I thought was that it would be more interesting for my life to be a doctor who knows how to code than to be a coder who knows how to code. And it was like really that decision where I realised, okay, why don't I do medicine?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Keep the coding websites to kind of stuff on the side so that I can eventually do some kind of tech startup thing related to medicine. And then medicine becomes a side hustle in a way before I had the terminology of the phrase side hustle. And so it ended up not quite working out that way, but, but certainly from my first year of med school onwards, I knew that I was not going to be a doctor full time. I was going to do medicine for fun and I was going to make money on the side through a tech. Startup or something like that.

• 9:38Steven Bartlett?

  And did you try tech startup?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Uh, a little bit. So in my first year of uni, uh, second year of uni, I started a company that helped other kids get into med school. And then, so that was like in-person courses. But then eventually, because me and my brother knew how to code, we turned this into a software online question bank for the different med school admissions programs. And so that would, that was it sort of like, you know, subscription billing, software as a service kind of product, uh, which was the closest I got to a tech startup. I, I dabbled with a few like medical tech things. I used to do freelance app design and web design for med tech startups while I was at, while I was at uni. But when the YouTube channel started and that really started taking off, I sort of realized that the thing I actually want to do is, is teaching rather than coding.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  And then something, something that you talk about in the book is kind of reflecting on your life and figuring out what are your values? What is the thing that you have that intrinsic motivation for? And for me, I always had that intrinsic motivation for business type stuff and also for teaching. I used to do tutoring when I was like from the age of 13 up until now. And those were the times where I felt most alive in a way where I was teaching someone else. And the nice thing about being a YouTuber is that it's just teaching at scale. And so I think I found that thing that drives me intrinsically. Now, so now tech startup is sort of a, oh, backup option. If YouTube channel fails, if I get struck off the medical register, I can probably start a tech startup or, or words to that effect.

• 11:03Steven Bartlett?

  I always find it a little bit weird that someone would just like go on YouTube and make a video. You know what I mean? Like that, when you hear about the first time where these big YouTubers started, whether it's like True Jordy, who I've spoken to here, or Alfie Days, who I think became like the biggest, one of the biggest YouTubers in the country. Like that first decision to record yourself, usually in your bedroom on a shit camera, talking to nobody.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:25Steven Bartlett?

  Is a little bit weird.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  It is very odd.

• 11:28Steven Bartlett?

  How did it start for you?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  It started for me. So I harbored dreams of being a YouTuber since about two thousand and nine.

• 11:34Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Because I used to follow people like Kurt Schneider and Sam Tui, who were kind of YouTube cover artists. They would produce covers of popular songs and those covers were amazing. Like they filmed them beautifully, arranged them beautifully. And I had a few friends who were really good at singing and I fancied myself, you know, I was quite into maths. I like the idea of playing multiple musical instruments. So I thought I want to be the sort of YouTuber where I can play along to songs and my friends who are actually good at singing can sing along to those songs. And that's the sort of YouTuber I want to be. And so I sort of had a few like sort of stop-starting moments over the, over those like next 10 years. Kind of trying and failing at this. But ultimately, the reason I became a YouTuber was because it was content marketing for my medical school admissions business.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Where I was helping people get into med school, teaching them how to do well in these exams. And no one was really creating decent content for free on the internet about those exams. There was these kind of corporations creating boring corporate looking stuff. And I saw that gap in the market. I was like, great. If I can create these sort of tutorials on YouTube, content marketing, people will watch my tutorials free. And if they like me enough, they'll sign up to the course. And that's why I started speaking to a camera in my bedroom. It was like, all right, guys, here are some tips for section one of the B man. You know, section one is all about critical thinking, the 60 minutes and 35 questions and bloody blind. Here's how you do it. And I was so familiar with that stuff, having taught it for five years, that that started to do reasonably okay early on.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  In the days where I had like 51 subscribers, 52, you know, refreshing the YouTube app every day to be like, oh my God, I've got another view.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  And then it sort of morphed from there.

• 13:10Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a tipping point where you thought, fuck, this is going to be bigger than the thing that I intended this to support?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that tipping point was my first video that went viral. And it was a video about how to study for exams. This was one of those weird.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Weird things that I look back on where when I started YouTube, it was in June of 2017. I knew that I wanted to make this video, this sort of how to study for exams, evidence-based tips at some point further down the line. It was a topic that I'd researched extensively. I like, people would come to me asking for help on how to study for their exams. There's actually a whole body of like psychological research on this that we just don't get taught in school around what are the actually most effective ways to learn. And so I knew I wanted to make a video about this, but I knew that I wanted that to be like my 100th video rather than my first video. Because I knew that I I knew nothing about cameras or editing or anything. And I reasoned it would take me 100 videos of being bad at it before I could make a video that was actually good. And I thought to myself, okay, I really want to put all my, everything into this 100th video so that this video can potentially go big.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  And that's kind of what ended up happening. I think it was my 81st video or something rather than my 100th, but that video went viral. I I had like 4,000 subscribers before, just sort of slowly building up. And then over the next few weeks, it just exploded up to like 20,000, 25,000. And I was getting all these comments from people who knew me in real life being like, oh, I've I've seen your video. I didn't realize you were a YouTuber. And that was the tipping point, which sort of started that exponential growth trajectory that you kind of you talk about in the compounding chapter.

• 14:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. About that again, I so there's two things there. The first, I'll just do them in the order in which I I thought of them.

• 14:54Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, because you mentioned compounding there. What have you learnt from your experience on YouTube about the importance of of consistency?

• 15:03Steven Bartlett?

  And also from what you kind of, what typically happens with viral videos is just there's. It's so impossibly hard to predict the outcome, right? So a lot of people, a lot of people on YouTube will make videos called how to make a viral video. And in marketing, it's all like, here are the secret source, here are the secret principles. But in reality, you can only, you can, you can guess a couple of principles, but the outcome is hard to predict. So what have you learnt about consistency, but then also being able to predict the outcome?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I was listening to your compounding chapter, I just found myself like nodding along like an absolute maniac to everything you were saying. I think it applies so much to YouTube. These days I I teach people how to be part-time YouTubers. And the thing I say is that. If you make one video every week for two years, then I 100% guarantee it will change your life. I can't put any numbers on it. I can't tell you'll have 100,000 subscribers or how much money you'll be making, but I can 100% guarantee it will change your life. At the very least, in terms of the skills and the experience and the contacts and the friends you're going to make through that process. But you have to put out one video a week and you have to do it for at least two years.

• 16:07Steven Bartlett?

  Just ask on that then, on that point there. What is it that would make someone do that? Because I mean, that's like, fucking clean the floor every day for two years and I promise you it'll work out for you. It like, people don't seem to be able to do those kinds of things without some kind of intrinsic driver. So I'm like, I'm curious, because you could say that to a million people, you could broadcast that through a ton of it and 95% plus will still fail. So what is it that makes people from your, your experience, but also from your own life, makes them do the work without guarantee of outcome?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, again, I feel this bit of a cop out because this is stuff that you talk about, like enjoying the process. And this is kind of the theme of the book that I'm writing around how, you know, it's actually quite hard to show up week after week, not see any results, not see the views and the subscribers going up and stuff particularly quickly. But the thing that makes it bearable, the thing that makes it fun is actually enjoying the process and shifting away from outcome oriented goals, like a certain number of views, a certain number of subscribers, and more towards goals that are 100% within our control. Like, I just want to make two videos a week. And if I'm happy with a video, then it goes out. And in fact, even if I'm not happy with the video, it goes out anyway. And everyone I know who has succeeded on YouTube has had that kind of attitude at

• 17:30Speaker 01

  some point. I just have to get that video out every Tuesday without fail. It's not an option. It's going to get done. And, you know, like you say, and when we talk, when we talk about compounding, that, that video on day one isn't going to do anything. The video on day two or day three or day 24 is not going to do anything. But you find when you're on day 300 and day 600, oh, actually, all of this stuff has been compounding very, very slowly. And then the results happen really, really, really slowly. And then all at once, as soon as you just get that one video that, that goes viral.

• 17:58Steven Bartlett?

  That is, I think that's the chapter where I talk about the eighth wonder of the world. Yeah, that's it with Warren Buffett and my dog Pablo being the opposing investor. And I genuinely, I think I learnt that lesson when I wrote the book. When I look back on my life and I thought about all the things that compounded in my favour, whether it was like my, honestly, I'm going to keep it facts with you. My teeth, had some problems with my teeth and I thought, do you know why? And I probably references in the book, like I hadn't been brushing one of my teeth properly. And it never mattered today or tomorrow, the day after, but there I was in that dentist's chair, but having my teeth fucking pulled out. And then my Instagram was the same. Health and fitness at the moment, the same. My business was the same. And it just goes to show that it's not those key, critical, big decisions we make to drop out.

• 18:43Steven Bartlett?

  It's that like, yeah, it's the compounding small, almost irrelevant decisions. But people don't, because I heard you started working out.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 18:53Steven Bartlett?

  And then you stopped.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  So I've had a personal trainer now for the last kind of eight months or so.

• 18:57Steven Bartlett?

  There you go, amazing.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  And, you know, I've been, I've been going on and off with the workout thing since the age of 18 and never done it properly until I got a personal trainer. Where now I'm having to show up, I'm paying someone for a quid an hour to basically just be with me while I'm doing stuff. And that has been the thing that's given me the most results.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  So I think whatever, like I find in my life, for things, for things that I actually care about, where I'm like, okay, I actually care about becoming a happy, sexy millionaire or whatever. Let me try and figure out ways that will remove my own need for discipline and willpower from that equation. And instead, get an accountability buddy or get a coach or pay a friend a hundred quid if I don't do the thing. This was what my brother and I did when we were trying to motivate ourselves. I was doing songwriting, he was doing stand up comedy. Like, right, if we don't do this every Thursday for half an hour, we're going to pay each other 50 quid. Things like that to remove the choice, the motivation, the willpower, the discipline. The more of that can be outsourced to someone else or removed completely, the more I find I actually get stuff done.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  And then I don't have to worry about it because I'm like, okay, this is taken care of. I just show up.

• 20:03Steven Bartlett?

  I guess you're removing, you're moving the, as opposed to like removing it, you're moving it to another pact. Like, N R I L refers to it as what you've described as a financial pact. Where now your motivation is to not lose 50 quid. Like, because that is, that's a greater motivating force than you have within yourself to work out. That's interesting. Is that sustainable?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 20:23Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  This is all the stuff that I'm researching for the, for, for the book at the moment. And you, and you talk about this as well, like in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And the way that I, I think of it, when I, when I think back on my life, is that everything that I've done sustainably has been because of intrinsic motivation. I've genuinely enjoyed the thing, but you can genuinely enjoy a thing and still find it really hard to get started. I think that's where the biggest procrastination comes in for all of us, where it's actually just showing up to the gym. That's the hard part. Like, once you're there, it's kind of easy. It's writing those first 10 words, because once you've started writing the first 10, it's kind of easier to enjoy the process of writing the rest of them. And so, and so the way I think about it is to get over that, like, hump of procrastination, that activation energy to get started.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  At that point, I will use every tool that in my arsenal to just, just get me to do the thing for two minutes. Because I think once, once you do the thing for two minutes, it becomes so much easier to actually enjoy the process and, and sustain it.

• 21:19Steven Bartlett?

  And, and you're so right when it comes to procrastination, like that getting started point. I've again just learnt this from podcast guests that I've had, Nira Iel, again, I refer to him. He, he said to me one day on this podcast, he was like, people procrastinate usually because there's a great deal of psychological discomfort surrounding starting the task. And a lot of the time, especially with a gym or even an essay, that psychological discomfort is like, you don't have the answers. So I don't know how to use the machines at the gym, or I don't actually have, I don't feel competent enough to even write this essay. So I'm just going to do the fucking dishes.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Steven Bartlett?

  It's like, I'm going to hoover the, the whole house and anyone else's house that needs hoovering today.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:57Steven Bartlett?

  You, you wrote, you made a video about procrastination, didn't you?

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:01Steven Bartlett?

  Break that down for me. What's, what's in the video?

• 22:04Steven Bartlett?

  So the video is called How to Stop Procrastinating, right?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  So the way I think about procrastination, basically procrastination is a problem with getting started, kind of this law of inertia, Newton's first law that if something is at rest, it will continue to stay at rest. But if something's moving, it will continue to move without needing an external force. And so the key to overcoming procrastination is that little that little nudge at the start towards actually getting started. And all of the techniques around that, like in the whole like psychology research or research around this, it's just around making make it as easy as possible. So reduce all of the friction to doing it. If you want to learn the guitar, then have the guitar by your sofa rather than in the wardrobe where you're never going to see it. And if it's out of sight, it's out of mind, you're never going to do it. There's like the external

• 22:52Speaker 01

  environmental friction towards doing the thing. But then there's also the internal friction. It's like those narratives that we tell ourselves, the the psychological discomfort of going to the gym, the I don't want to see how other people are going to see me, the even even having having the wrong sort of goal. Like if my goal in writing the book is, I really want to hit the New York Times bestseller list, then it's really, really hard to bring myself to write anything, because now every single word I have to write has to be a New York Times bestselling word. Whereas if the goal is, to be honest, I just want to write a book I'm proud of, that's fun to fun to write. That's actually within my control. And it becomes so much easier to get started at doing the thing. So to overcome procrastination, we need to eliminate external friction, i.e. the environmental stuff. We need to try our best to get rid of the internal friction, like the emotional

• 23:36Speaker 01

  side of it, the mindset, the perfectionism, the the fear, the discomfort. And then if we still need help, there are a few a few hacks. The one that I use all the time is the the two minute rule, which is where I will genuinely convince myself, I'm only going to do it for two minutes. And if I want, I'm allowed to stop after the two minutes because two minutes is better than nothing. But like 95% of the time, I decide to continue because two minutes is all you need to change your life.

• 23:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  I should tweet that. That's good.

• 24:01Steven Bartlett?

  So yeah, that's really good. And I that two minute thing is fascinating to me because I one of the things that I see as another psychological barrier to starting is people view it as like they view the challenge as Mount Everest. Whereas like they've got a I'll say it in another way, they view the challenge as moving Mount Everest. And really, if they viewed it as just like moving one pebble at a time, it becomes such a simple task.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:22Steven Bartlett?

  And I get this a lot when entrepreneurs ask me, they say, Steve, I want to start a business. Where do I start? And you can hear in the question that they see it as moving Mount Everest.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:30Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm like, well, today, all you have to do is think of a name. Just think of like 50 names, make a shortlist of names. And then we'll revisit it tomorrow. And then tomorrow, maybe think of, you know, go and check if the website's available. And then we'll revisit it the day after.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:45Steven Bartlett?

  And when it becomes that, and when it becomes sort of really small, itemized, one small step at a time, and you not having to get from step zero to a thousand immediately. It becomes so, you know, the psychological discomfort fades away. It feels achievable. And that your two minute rule is doing a similar thing where it's saying, well, today only I've only got to do just, just fucking open the word document and write the title and then we're done. You know, and so that's fascinating. What about, you were gonna say something else there?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, just to your point there. Have you, have you come across the blog Wait But Why?

• 25:18Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Oh, it's incredible. You should definitely interview Tim Urban when you're in America.

• 25:21Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, I do know what, I literally yesterday went on his Instagram and sent him a DM.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Yeah, he's, he's awesome. Any, any podcast he's ever been on, I've been like, oh, this is so sick. He has a great blog post series about overcoming procrastination. And the way he refers to that, that point you just made is that there are lots of tasks that are very like vague and icky. And you have to be able to un-icky-ify a task. And something like start a business is icky, something like learn to code is icky because like, what the hell does that even mean? Like, where do you even start? Whereas brainstorm 10 ideas for a name and pick one of them is a very clearly defined next action step. And so I get this with students all the time where people are like, oh, I don't have the motivation to study for my chemistry exam. It's like, what's on your to do list? Study for my chemistry exam. That's never gonna happen. Read chapter one and answer questions four to five are a reasonable thing, a reasonably defined next action step.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  And so what I do is anytime I find myself procrastinating from something, I think, okay, am I procrastinating? Because I actually, the, the task is too icky. I, I don't know what I have to do. Cause once I know what I have to do, I can then do it for two minutes and it gets done.

• 26:24Steven Bartlett?

  You know, people talk about how they'll put on their to do list, clean house. And it'll sit on a to do list and clean house, that's a

• 26:31Speaker 01

  That's a big thing.

• 26:33Steven Bartlett?

  And it'll, and that'll sit on your to do list for like, I don't know, two weeks, whatever. But if you do, if you time block and write and you're, this is what I do on the weekends because, so Monday to Friday, my schedule is ran by the, the meetings and things I have to do. So I'm a slave to the calendar. Saturday and Sunday come around, I wake up, I'm like.

• 26:51Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I'm like, what the fuck? How does this thing work? This life? Yeah, I'm like, it's empty. I've got loads of things I know I could be doing right now, but nothing, no one telling me what to do in a, in a, in a life of mine where I'm told what to do every five minutes.

• 27:07Steven Bartlett?

  So I time block on the weekends, which means clean house would become at 11 till 12, I clean the kitchen. Cause then it's like time sensitive and like task specific.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:18Steven Bartlett?

  And that's, that's been an absolute game changer for me. And I also think in the era of working from home.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:24Steven Bartlett?

  Where, you know, people are sat at home, they have a tasks they have to.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  It's like, it's almost like we prep for this, cause like, this is literally like the, the three part structure of, of my book, which I've been like, I just having in my head for the last, last few weeks. Where like, step one is how do we beat the procrastination? How do we get started with doing the thing? And part two of the book is how do we sustain? How do we actually keep on going, doing the thing? And there's just, so in, in, in terms of mindset, the thing that I found that actually moves the needle is focusing on trying to make it fun. And I really, I really like that word fun. Like, I think there's something about the word fun that is so like childish, but also fully speaks to, like fun basically means in intrinsic motivation, like something is sufficiently enjoyable,

• 28:12Speaker 01

  that you do it for its own sake, rather than for the fact that you've got a sponsor helping you, or you've got a deadline or, or things like that.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  There's one, there's one story in particular that I, I, I often come back to, and that's like,

• 28:26Speaker 01

  sometime last year, I was, I was working at the hospital, it was pandemic season, et cetera, et cetera. And I'd, I'd gotten to the end of like a 13 hour long shift and I was just about to go home. Uh, and the nurse said to me, oh, Ali, can you put a cannula in this patient? Her like IV line is tissue'd and, and she needs fluids overnight. And my heart kind of sank. I was like, oh no. Like if, if the nurse wasn't able to put the cannula in, that means there's a patient with difficult veins. It means it's going to be hot to put this in. And I sort of had this mindset of like, all right, then fine. And sort of grudgingly took out the cannula and got, got all the, the equipment in a tray. And I.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Like as as I was doing this, I there was a patient in the bay next door where they were just like talking to a family member or something and saying, oh, you know, this hospital has been amazing. Everyone is so nice and what a pleasure it is, you know, freaking love the NHS kind of vibes. And I realized that in that moment, I was not being like a good model internally for what I want the NHS to be and what I want a good doctor to be. And there's something that Seth Godin, who who I've been following for a while, says, which is that it's the difference between have to and get to. And so I was considering as like, oh, I have to put in this cannula. And I remembered that blog post I read from Seth Godin where he said, instead of thinking of have to, think of it as get to.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I realized, oh, I get to put in this cannula. I get to make a difference in this patient's lives and and life and give her fluids overnight so that she's not going to dehydrate because of her morning sickness. And just that mindset shift immediately made me feel so much better about it. And I was like, oh, I get to do this. Who cares if I've been working for 13 hours? This is fun. This is privileged. This is cool. And I put it in and we had a nice chat and I felt really great about it afterwards. And now, like, and so that's one of the mindset things that I just always come back to. If I'm finding myself not enjoying something and therefore my focus goes, I get distracted, I procrastinate. Instead of thinking I have to do this, I think I get to do this.

• 30:16Steven Bartlett?

  It's like a gratitude shift.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's like your chapter three, I was talking about gratitude.

• 30:22Steven Bartlett?

  And we so quickly fall out of gratitude.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 30:25Steven Bartlett?

  When we become used to, yeah. When we become like used to the privilege of our life, used to the privilege of our jobs, of our relationships, of our kids, of our dog. We we think, well, you know, we and because and the Stoic people talk about this. I think I probably talk about this in the book as well, because these are just like, clearly the only idea that I have, put them all in there. About how they used to do that, like hedonistic adaptation. Exercises to literally take the things out of their life that they really value, just to remind themselves of what they had. And it kind of seems like, yeah. Gratitude is a very important thing.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Have you, have you got like a defined gratitude practice that you do, like gratitude journaling or that kind of stuff?

• 31:01Steven Bartlett?

  So I, the gratitude journaling thing takes place in the notes of my phone where sometimes I feel the need to remind myself of what I'm really, really grateful for. I think I do have a, a bias towards feeling grateful all the time. I really just get overwhelmed sometimes with like, I'll have like a little flash. You'll probably get this when you think, what the fuck is this?

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:22Steven Bartlett?

  Like, you know, like what the, especially now that I'm on Dragon's Den and that was a real vision of mine from when I was like 12 years old. I'm like, oh my, this is, and I said this in my show the other day, I said, um, said on stage in the diary of a CEO live. I said that, um, I said to the audience, I said, like, I think everybody in this room is living a life that you once dreamed of living. But you don't, you're not even happy about it because present you, well, yes, present you has told you that future you will be even happier when you get to somewhere else. But like, this is it. This was the fucking dream and look at you living it. Look at you as your, you know, doctors and lawyers and you've got the job at that brand you always wanted to work for.

• 32:02Steven Bartlett?

  This is it. Um, and I, I have to do that to myself sometimes because, yeah, um, because if not, you'll never get there. If your happiness is always, as I say in the book, if, if it always lives somewhere in the future behind some goal or it's the attainment of some task or whatever, it always will be there. And that was certainly the case for me. And I, from what I read about you, where, um, you were talking about like outcomes and not being too attached to the outcomes. Sounds like it might've been similar.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, very much so. Um, I, I have to remind myself on a daily basis as well, um, to kind of be, be, be grateful for, for all of the things.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Sometimes like if I, if, if I'm in the habit of doing like a morning journal, I'll like write down a list of three things. And it's, it's often simple things like, you know, this cup of coffee in my hand or Angus or like my housemate. And it's just like, you know, this nice chat that we had. And I think like, like for me, if I don't remind myself, I, I always just think in kind of hustle mode of like, all right, cool. Onto the next thing, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. But like, it was, it was pretty cool yesterday. Like, we, we, we went on a tour of Jimm Shark HQ up north. And I was just thinking that, I can't believe this is, this is my job. Like, I, I get to do this for work. This is absolutely sick. And even now, being here, like, this is, sitting here, talking to you, is what I get to do for work. And if, like, I don't know, 18 year old me, were to imagine being in this position now,

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I'd just been like, oh, my God, this is, this is the dream. Have you come across a guy called Brandon Sanderson? Nope. Uh, he's an author. He, he writes, he's, he's my favorite author. Uh, he does these incredible, like, fantasy novels, Stormlight Archive, huge, huge, huge, uh, series. In it, there's like, a, a phrase that I always come back to around this point. There's this, like, um, order of knights, they're called the knights radiant. And they have, like, their, like, charter, their ideals. And their first ideal is life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. And it's that final bit of journey before destination, that I remind myself of on a basically daily basis, where it's, it's kind of like Miley Cyrus, the thing of, it's the climb. It's not about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb. And the way I

• 34:12Speaker 01

  try and, I try and remind myself of this point of, I, I am enough, is thinking and, and really trying to internalize that the journey is more important than the destination. Hmm. And I think we do need a destination, like, you know, the fact that I want to, I don't know, write this book or whatever, like, that's, that's a destination. But now that I've got that destination of like, cool, this is the direction I want to go. At that point, in a dream world, I would just forget about that. And now that I'm on the journey, I would enjoy the journey on its own merit. Because, you know, as you know, once you, if you set a goal, you hit the goal, it's like, well, happiness lasts, the, the, the joy from that lasts about five seconds, and then it feels like nothing. Even, like, sometimes it doesn't feel like anything at all, even, even for those five seconds. Mm hmm.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Um, and so what I've been realizing a lot recently is that, yes, we're, I don't know, expanding the team and moving to an office in London and like, hiring people and bloody blah, blah, blah. But really, like, am I enjoying myself day to day? Hmm. And am I kind of living the dream, as it were, day to day, and not, and not so much worrying about the goal at the end of it? One thing that you, that you talk about as well, um, is I think it was either chapter nineteen or twenty, it was around this thing of ambition versus insecurity. Is this thing that you think you want to do, is it coming from within or is it coming from outside of you? And you talk about values, like living in alignment with your values. Do you have any, like, how do you figure out what your values are?

• 35:39Steven Bartlett?

  It's a really interesting, it's a really interesting thing. I think, I think one of the best indicators of what your values are are from how you feel. That's maybe the most fundamental human stimuli we have, which is how something makes us feel.

• 35:58Steven Bartlett?

  Slight tangent, and I was talking to someone about this yesterday.

• 36:04Steven Bartlett?

  In the world we live in, and as the social media connected from birth generation, we don't understand what our actual, true, intrinsic values are very easily. Because even if, and this is kind of a controversial topic, but who cares? Even charity, we all think we're charitable human beings, we're not. And if you've only got to look back at human history to understand that our morals are highly influenced by what society is doing at the time. Because if you go back 150 years, I would have been a slave potentially, right? My family certainly would have in Africa, like they would have had a high chance of being slaves. And at the time, my slave master was not a bad person, he was a good person, you know, morally sound person, you know?

• 36:46Steven Bartlett?

  And now, obviously, that's viewed as being an awful thing. And it's the same within like the LGBTQQQ community that, you know, at one time,

• 36:58Steven Bartlett?

  that was just everyone knew that believed that being in a same-sex relationship was a terrible thing, an evil thing in some religious writings. Now we all accept it to be, how can our morals of society has changed? The force that's telling us what's right and wrong, what's good and bad, what's valued and what, you know, has changed. That's the only change that's happened. So I do believe deeply that a lot of our values unavoidably come from our willingness to survive by taking up the values of the communities we live in. However, when it comes to your personal values. However, they've been shaped usually from your parents or early experiences. I I just go on based on how things make me feel.

• 37:38Steven Bartlett?

  And that seems to be the only indication I I have of what's what's true for me and what's not. If I if I'm alone and I watch a video of a baby suffering or crying and it makes me sad. When no one's around.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:56Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm not having to tweet about my feelings to the world. Then I would assume that that is, you know, you said about learning and sorry, teaching. You've got enjoyment from that. You've always got, I would assume that's one of your sort of professional values or something you value professionally.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've been on a whole like a quest across the internet over the last few months to try and answer this question of how do you how do you figure out what your values are? There's this like program with a life coach that I even did, which is like just just finishing up where one of the exercises was to like go back to your childhood and think about kind of on a scale of kind of minus 10 to plus 10, minus being really bad and plus being really good. Like what were the most salient experiences of your childhood? And I was like, okay, this sounds like BS, but all right, let me engage with this process. And then I I made this list of all these things that these salient memories from childhood, like, you know, that time when my brother new game to my Pokemon blue and I lost my 146 Pokemon and that how how that felt and that time when whatever.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  And the facilitator was like, okay, let's try and tease out like what this might tell you about some of your values. I was kind of surprised that a lot of the stuff that came out of that. If I think about, is this a core value that I live by slash I want to live by? The answer was yes. And I was surprised by how much of those experiences where when I was under 10 years old shaped maybe the values that I've got right now. And so when I think about my values, it's things like, I think primarily for me right now, it's like freedom and autonomy. Which is why I think I've got this whole drive to be financially independent, to work medicine part time rather than full time, to have be in control of my own schedule. Things like togetherness and kind of working with other people has always been a really fun thing for me.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Whether I was in school or university, studying with friends is just always more fun than studying on my own. And that wasn't true for everyone, but it was certainly true for me. Teaching on that list kind of. Helping other people in a way, but like I've got, I've got friends, for example, who, who, who run charities and they genuinely feel in their hearts. If there is suffering in the world.

• 39:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  And I don't genuinely feel in my heart when they're suffering in the world. But I know intellectually that I should care about this thing. And so I will act in a way that makes me care about the thing and like donate 10% of my money to charity every year and all this, all this stuff. But I won't actually feel it.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  But when I think about how I feel, it's like teaching, teaching other people rather than saving, saving lives is the impact that I care about having. And when I realized this, I was like, oh, okay. This explains why I actually don't really care that much about medicine. Like I'm, I prefer teaching medical students than actually practicing as a doctor. And realizing that teaching is more of a value for me than saving lives, for example. I was like, okay, cool. This, this makes sense. I can now get on board with that and not feel bad about it.

• 40:39Steven Bartlett?

  The other point is that I've never cared about, really, I've really never cared about finding out what my values are. Because, and this is probably goes back to how I answered that question because the stimuli that I have to decide all of these things is like, um, how does it make me feel? And I think if you have a good quitting framework, then you will quickly move in the direction of your values, um, much faster than others will.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Quitting framework.

• 41:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, like if you have a good, a good, uh, like quitting framework.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:06Steven Bartlett?

  You're very good at quitting, then you, you're actually, you're, so if you're good at conducting experiments and then quitting, like just, it's like rapid A B testing, right? And you can, I think, I think the answer really to finding out who you are and what your values are and getting your place to a life that you really love is try something. I, I always say to young people, increase the amount of experiments you're doing and quit faster. So you go and get a job, you're like, okay, um, I hate this. This boss was a dick because we didn't have any freedom here or autonomy. I hate that part. I love the fashion part, but I just hate this environment because of this, this and this. Quit. Go and find a job where you have the bit you liked and some new sort of, uh, factors. And then you go, okay, well, I love that bit. I actually loved being a manager here. I'm going to keep the fashion piece. I love the autonomy of being able to work from home or whatever. Quit, move on, the next job, you know?

• 41:51Steven Bartlett?

  And I think that's what I've done in my life is I never knew what my values were, but I went in the direction of, um. I started out in call centers, knew I loved building things, being an entrepreneur in sales, moved in that direction, quit the call center jobs, did about fifteen of them, start my own business, parts of business I really don't like, don't want to do those parts, don't do them, I still don't do them.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:13Steven Bartlett?

  And I'm like, this is the part within this bit, within business that I love doing within this industry, and I never was intentional about that, there was no plan. It was this rapid, increase the experiments you're doing and quit as fast as you possibly can.

• 42:28Steven Bartlett?

  And then you end up, I think, in a life that you're, but quitting is easier said than done. I have to say, it would be remiss if I didn't say, all of this is underpinned by a huge confidence in self. And the fact when I do quit, I don't need a plan and that I'll, I'll be fine. A lot of people don't have that part, so they hold themselves in a miserable situation because it's a certain one.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, I like, like when I, when I read that bit of the book, the quitting framework, I was sort of retrospectively applying decisions I've made to quit to that, that thing of like suck and hard. And I was like, oh, okay, this actually makes a lot of sense. There was one decision that my mom still haunts me about, which was about, about a year ago, I decided that, you know what, I want to take my medical career seriously and I want to move to America to do medicine. I had a few friends who were there, it seemed like an adventure and it seemed cool, but to move to America from the UK to do medicine, you have to take this like ridiculously hard exam called the USMLE, and it's basically like relearning all of medical school, but at like, you know, a ridiculous level of detail, more so than we have in the UK.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  And so I started off preparing for this and I realized that this is actually really hard. And the thing that I reasoned in my mind was, I could do this, it's, but the reward is really not worth it. Like you get to the end of it, I'd spoken to some doctors who lived working in America and were like, yeah, you make four hundred K a year and you're working a lot and you're going through this four years of grueling residency program. And in my mind, it was like, okay, it's, it's hard and the outcome is not worth it.

• 44:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Therefore, I'm just going to quit.

• 44:02Steven Bartlett?

  That's the worst place to be in life. Doing hard, struggling for nothing.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then when I have conversations with my mom, it's like, oh, well, you quit because you're a quitter, like the fact that you found it hard, me, like you only quit because it was hard. It's like, no, I didn't only quit because it was hard. I also, I also crucially quit because it was like, the, the reward was not going to be worth it, but I didn't quite have the terminology to express that until I read it in your book.

• 44:28Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I didn't either. And it was again, that's why I have to specify that that's not the framework I've made my decisions through for my whole life. In hindsight, I'm a very logical sort of first principle thinker. And that's why I'm able to arrive at peace when I make these massive life decisions, because it's like, oh, logically, there was no alternative. There was no alternative. I'm not going to do something that's hard and not worth it. What kind of insanity is that? I am someone that will do something that's hard and worth it. I'm not, and I'm, I'm not someone that's going to quit every time something sucks. I am someone that's going to try and change it if it's worth it. And if I think it's possible to change. Me and my, what, you know, my girlfriend have an argument and I go, this sucks and fucking walk out the door. And that's not who I am. I will try and

• 45:10Steven Bartlett?

  fight for something if it's worth it. And if I believe it's changeable. And so logically, I think that framework is robust. I think it's solid. You talk a lot about time management, managing one's time. You made a lot of videos about the topic. What would have been some of the other sort of tips or tricks that you've adopted that have helped you manage your time better? We talked about time blocking and breaking your vague to do list tasks down into specific ones. Is there anything else that comes to mind?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's one, I've, I've read a bunch of books around productivity and stuff. There's one called Make Time by these champs called Jake and John. And there's a tip in there, which I genuinely use every day. It's just, it's called the daily highlight, or it's just similar to Gary Keller's thing of the one thing, like, what is the one thing you want to do today? And then it's like, I define that in the morning. Okay, what's the one thing I want to do today? Record this podcast with you. What's the one thing I want to do tomorrow? Finish sample chapter for the book proposal. And then I'll stick a slot in the calendar for it. And then the thing will get done. And on days where I actually do the daily highlight thing, I have about a 50% success rate with actually thinking about it in the morning. I always just get more done. And I feel at the end of the day, oh, I've made progress because I've done that one thing that was most important.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  And on the days where I don't, I find that like, oh, I've got these 18 things to do on my to do list. Oh, can't be, got this MI message coming from this person who wants to intro, intro to that person. Whereas when, when I know what that one thing is, I'm like, okay, cool. All I have to do is just get that one thing done today. And I sometimes think that if I did this more often, if for 365 days, I actually just did the one thing that's most important each day, I'd be making so much progress. I'd be having so much fun. And then I think to myself, why, why don't I actually just do this every day? But that's, that's one of my main ones.

• 46:51Steven Bartlett?

  That's life as well. And you, when you talked about the tipping point in your career where you blew up, you're talking about, you made that video about how to study. And I guess the premise of that video was teaching people how to learn better.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 47:04Steven Bartlett?

  You've read a lot of books. As it relates to learning.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Steven Bartlett?

  Outside of studying, just more generally, what tools have you adopted? Cause you're some, you even, you know, you've read my book and you remember everything, it seems. What trips and tips and tricks have you learned about how to learn better?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So essentially the main one is that we learn by testing ourselves rather than by consuming more stuff. Like we, like in, which is a bit counterintuitive, like when it comes to, if we, if we think about like studying and then we can kind of broaden it out. Like if it comes to studying, we think that to, to learn more stuff, I need to get more information into my brain. But what, what all the evidence says is that, no, to learn more stuff, you actually just need to read it once. And then you have to try your best to get it out of your brain. And that feels hard and it feels tough and it feels like, oh, I'm an idiot. I don't know enough. But that, that like desirable difficulty is what allegedly creates the neuronal connections in our brain to make us actually learn something. And so it's similar to working out like progressive overload.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  When it's heavy and when it feels hard is when your muscles are actually growing. Cause you've got the stimulus for growth. Equally, when it comes to learning anything, when it feels hard is when there is a stimulus for the neurons to grow. Or words to that effect. And so when it comes to studying, if anyone is sort of listening to this, has exams coming up and they are worried about their grades. The, the answer is that they're just not testing themselves enough. The more you test yourself, the better grades you'll get. And this therefore applies also to every other thing that we're trying to learn. So, you know, if I'm learning, I was learning how to play, you've got a friend in me on the guitar the other day. And if I'm just playing through the first two verses of it that I know already, I'm not learning anything. But as soon as I try doing the thing that feels hard, at that point, it's like, the, the harder it feels, the more I'm learning. And then, and then we sleep and then the connections get solidified.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  So it's that, that's kind of the main concept, basically test yourself more, whatever that thing is. And the second big one in the research is spaced repetition. That anything we learn, whether it's a fact for an exam or a song on the guitar, our memory for it will. Exponentially decay over time. And the way to make it go into a long term memory, whatever the skill is, is to interrupt the forgetting curve at spaced intervals. So maybe you would you would practice the song on day one, you'd practice it again on day two, then on day five, then on day twenty five, then on day one hundred and five. And as the intervals lengthen, that is the sort of thing that gets this how to play the song or this fact about medicine or whatever into a long term memory.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  And most things around learning can basically be summed up by those two things, active recall, i.e. test yourself and spaced repetition, i.e. spaced it out over time.

• 49:37Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting. People are really fascinated by productivity, aren't they?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  They are, yeah.

• 49:42Steven Bartlett?

  I think I heard you say about like when you put the word productivity in your content, it seems to perform better.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I often think about this, like.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  So so to me, productivity, I think I think to a lot of people, productivity just means efficiency and creating economic output. The way that I define productivity is just kind of using my time well and working on things that are meaningful to me and optimizing for happiness. And so to me, this conversation is is productive, hanging out with friends is productive. I was playing PlayStation last night for a couple of hours. That to me was productive because I was like intentionally doing it because I wanted to take a break from writing.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  It's when I feel it's I I feel unproductive when I know there is something I want to do and I am not doing the thing because I'm scrolling Instagram. That to me is unproductive.

• 50:26Steven Bartlett?

  You're not being intentional with your time.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. But I think on the internet these days, people use productive as economic output and the whole like, oh, I want to be more productive. It's a, I think partly it's a.

• 50:40Steven Bartlett?

  Virtue signaling thing to some degree as well.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, partly it's a it's a virtue virtue signaling thing. I think I think partly it's also like a self flagellating thing in a way whereby. I I often see comments on my videos where it's like, oh, productive day in my life, which I'm kind of doing tongue in cheek just because it's funny. Where people are like, oh, my God, I watch these videos just to make myself feel bad. And I'm like, oh, wow, okay. A, this is a this is mostly a joke. Like, I hope you realize this, but but but also it's like that. That's kind of sad that that comment has got so many uploads where, oh, I feel so, I feel. Like such a wasteman when I watch one of Ali Abdaal's videos. And I think there is that like perverse sense of people getting pleasure out of the story they're telling themselves that they are nonproductive or that they are a chronic procrastinator.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  And to see someone who doesn't, who is on the surface seemingly so productive makes you kind of feel bad about yourself.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  I wonder if it's similar to like, if I look at my Instagram explore page, about a year ago, it used to be bikini models. These days, the dudes with six pack abs. And I look at that and there is a part of me that gets pleasure out of like flagellating myself and they're like, why, why don't I look like that yet? And I wonder to what extent that's like a thing in the world of productivity.

• 51:53Steven Bartlett?

  That is fascinating because, I mean, that would be driven by the antithesis of that, that's got to be driven by a culture where productivity and I'm getting so much done. So I'm going to be successful and rich and a millionaire. And this is, I'm in stealth mode, building this massive business and I've been up all night. Look at me, it's 4am and I'm still working. That's driving one end of the spectrum, which is making productivity and being productive and aspiration for this generation. And on the other end, that's, I mean, that's why, again, the desire to be productive is so high and your videos do so well on that topic. And then you have the, the counter movement as you always do where it's like, I'm such a procrastinator. And then all the memes, which bang just as hard because

• 52:37Steven Bartlett?

  there's been this desire created in culture to be, you know, super productive. Or as it relates to like weight and fitness, like everyone wants to look so good. And then the memes of people sat there with a pot noodle in their belly, like resting, like with their like running shoes on will also bang just as hard.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Steven Bartlett?

  But yeah, it's just a very relevant thing in our culture, which is quite, quite strange that this incessant desire to be productive. I think there's actually, there is a rising counterculture, which is about. Being okay with not being productive.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, exactly. I'm having to pepper that into my videos a lot more these days.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Because I kind of thought it was so obvious that it doesn't need to be stated that, obviously,

• 53:18Speaker 01

  don't seek economic output and productivity at the expense of other things that are more important, like health and relationships. But clearly, that's not a thing that is obvious. And so I'm now having to caveat a lot of my productivity advice with like, look, guys, let's define productivity as, you know, meaning and fulfillment and stuff, rather than pure economic output.

• 53:39Steven Bartlett?

  And it's okay to be intentional and say, I don't want to do anything today. If that was your intention, I want to just do fuck all. And I think that's the nuance that's required in all of that. You talked about relationships at the start of this podcast. You said, I think you alluded to the fact that you hadn't had much luck there when we were talking about knowing you're enough.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:02Steven Bartlett?

  What's going on?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a real problem. So there's a few narratives that I've bought into subconsciously. One of those narratives is that I am like a weedy nerd kid, the kid that I was when I was 12 years old and getting slightly bullied in school and getting grades and stuff, but like not really have anything, anything, not being valuable as a human being beyond the fact that I was generating A stars in exams. That's like one side of it. There's another side, but I'd love to hear your take on.

• 54:33Steven Bartlett?

  What's the other side?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  The other side is, if we're keeping it real, it's like, I think it's around masculinity and what it means to be a man. And if one were to hypothetically read WikiHow articles on how to get girls, or even the vast literature on the topic, there is a big thing of women are attracted to men, like, people who are, so someone who is a man, someone who leads, someone who's like alpha, those sorts of things. And I think my kind of default way of being is very not that. And like my idea of fun is singing Disney songs and playing board games until two o'clock in the morning with a pizza takeaway, rather than something that are more like macho alpha

• 55:20Speaker 01

  type person would be. And so. On the one hand, there's that thing of just be yourself, of be your authentic self, et cetera, et cetera. And a girl will like that for who you are. And on the other side, it's the the thing of you will objectively get more success with women in inverted commas if you sort of are more of that alpha type personality.

• 55:43Steven Bartlett?

  Here's the problem you have.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, please.

• 55:45Steven Bartlett?

  On the on the that particular point before we move on, because I'd love to hear what you're going on to say. But you you it sounded like you were saying, do I be myself and dance around listening to Disney, even though it might return a lower quantity of smoking hot potential partners?

• 56:03Steven Bartlett?

  Or the alternative to that is, do I be masculine guy and like act outside of self to generate more smoking hot partners? The issue you have is you've just got to zoom out and you've got to think about the outcome of both approaches and how sustainable both approaches are. All you can be is yourself for a long period of time.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:23Steven Bartlett?

  And if you want long, long term results, that's the only option you have. Of course, you can act as something you're not and pretend you don't like Disney and not listen playboard games and stuff. And you might meet the wrong person for a short amount of time. Because and it will be a short amount of time, because that relationship will capitulate the minute they find out who you actually are. And this is, there's, you know, yeah, this is, this is always, for me, the answer is, you have to be yourself. You have no choice in that. You do have a choice in being able to kill some of those confidence issues, which might be self sabotaging at key points in the relationship where it turns into insecurity and results in jealousy. And we know if you're coming into relationship thinking, why the fuck is this person with me?

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:08Steven Bartlett?

  The chance of you exhibiting jealous behavior and controlling behavior and manipulative behavior and insecure behavior and where are you? Why haven't you hear him? Why haven't you text me back fast enough? And is is high. And for me, that will put undue pressure on something that might have worked otherwise. So go ahead and work on the the confidence issues.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:25Steven Bartlett?

  But never, ever dare change who you are. Like, the things you intrinsic, do not change those. Do not try and act outside of those, because that is, that will lead to really short term results. And you don't actually want to be with anyone for 50 years that doesn't want to dance and listen to Disney movies with you. You don't actually want to. Society's telling you want smoking hot? But you don't actually want that. You won't return joy on that. You'll return status from walking in with a smoking hot model that has no brain, but you won't return joy in the long term. And that is the goal. That's the North Star. Does that make sense?

• 58:02Speaker 01

  It does. Yeah. Um, on the note of

• 58:08Speaker 01

  being yourself, the thing that I feel, I feel a contradiction is that on the one side, there's kind of be yourself. And on the other side, there's like, choose yourself. And what I worry about is what if this person who I am, i.e. the kind of nice guy who like enjoys Disney and board games and stuff, that's a result of accidental experiences that I haven't really chosen for myself. And should I instead be thinking, okay, who's the sort of person I want to be? Well, having said that, I don't want to be anyone who doesn't sing along Disney songs because they're just great. Yeah.

• 58:47Steven Bartlett?

  And you sing along to Disney songs, not because you're now being forced, because you enjoy it.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's genuinely fun.

• 58:51Steven Bartlett?

  It makes you feel good.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  I love it. Yeah, it's so good.

• 58:53Steven Bartlett?

  There you go. So that's part of the answer to a lot of the things we've discussed before, which is going in the direction of the things that make you feel good. Don't suppress things that make you feel good because then you'll feel shit. So if that makes you feel good, that is, as far as I'm concerned, you've explored and exploited, as you say, and you've, and you've, and you've found something you enjoy. And don't sacrifice that for what? For a pretty woman to be stood next to you, that's not, that, that, trust me, will not be enjoyment. That'll be status. That'll be extrinsic approval, which is very different from internal fulfillment. So I would never disregard those things. However, you can, as I've done over the last year and a half, say, do you know what? When I look at my values and who I actually want to be internally, my health, this is what I've done,

• 59:37Steven Bartlett?

  is so foundational to everything. And I really managed to almost hypnotise myself somehow into knowing that me being in good shape and me being someone that goes to the gym every day and prioritises that my health is my first foundation is in line with my happiness. The change in my life, the thing that's put me in the best shape of my life ever was before, as I've said in this podcast, me working out was all about women. The minute it became not about women, it stuck. Because, because, um, yeah, for so many reasons. I mean, I, I enjoyed the process and I removed wanting six pack. And I, I basically don't have any gym goals now whatsoever. My goal is to go every day. It stuck. It became intrinsic. It was for me.

• 1:00:21Steven Bartlett?

  And now I go every single day and the minute we finish this conversation, my PT is waiting for me. And I went yesterday, the day before, I'll go the day tomorrow, every day.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:30Steven Bartlett?

  I don't care. I'm not doing it for anyone else. So it sticks.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:00:35Steven Bartlett?

  That's why your relationship will fail if you're with someone that you, you're with for external reasons, it won't stick.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.

• 1:00:42Steven Bartlett?

  Content.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Content.

• 1:00:43Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you make a lot of content and you've must have come to learn a lot about humans and psychology from all these videos you make. You tinker around with the titles and the thumbnails and, um, uh, and you've become such a big YouTuber. You've got millions of subscribers from a very iterative process of, I guess, really understanding what humans will respond to and what they want, what their desires are. What would you give me as an advice for how to make, if I'm a listener, a really great content that people will care about? It's a broad question, but there you go.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  I think it's about hooking them in with the promise of something simple and quick. And then, and, and if you stop at that point, that is, I think, where a kind of sort of course scammers and, um, marketing gurus and stuff were maybe 20 years ago. It's hooking them in with a simple and quick promise, but then delivering on the nuance of it that I think people are caring about more than ever now. And so like, one thing that we've iterated with over time is, you know, often the success of a video will depend on how clickbait the title is. And there's no getting around that. We've never found that a title that's less clickbait, uh, does better.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  I, I did a video called how writing online changed my life. It absolutely bombed. Just change the title. How writing online made me a millionaire. Suddenly absolutely exploded. People love that, like, oh, this is a quick solution. This is a quick path to this, um, this, this goal that I want, hence your title of happy sexy millionaire. But we've also found that on videos where I think, oh, let's, let's dumb the message down. Let's just kind of do a quick five point listicle without any examples, because people just want the dopamine hit of advice that sounds reasonable, but they can't action. Those videos haven't done as well, like people click on them, but then they don't stay watching. And the videos we found that do the best is you make a promise at the start and then you deliver on the nuance throughout the whole thing.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  And actually, people, at least in my opinion, and I suspect in yours and anyone listening, actually do want depth and nuance, not just a sort of surface level, two minute long thing that you would have seen on YouTube, SoCo 2005. I think you did a pretty great job of that as, um, yeah.

• 1:03:05Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I'm learning, I'm, you know, continue to learn. YouTube is a bit of a new medium for me, so it was good, it's good to get that, um, that perspective. You, you also, you're very in, in sort of self-aware and honest. I, you wrote something about, um, why you're failing, which is, uh, I, I think you wrote a piece which was detailing why you think you're failing in life.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  I think I have this issue where I often feel like what I'm currently doing is not, quote, good enough. Because, you know, we're leaving money on the table, or because our team is inexperienced, or because I suck at being a manager, or I suck at being a leader. And although I'm learning to improve in, in all those things, I sometimes feel that, oh, but it's, it's, it's, it's not fast enough. I think that's where the comparison stuff comes in, because when my peer group was kind of just my friends in medical school, and I was doing the YouTube stuff, and then I was kind of the only one in the, in the, in the pack doing the thing.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  And so it was like, oh, anything goes, like, I'm not comparing myself to anyone. Now that I am sort of a bigger name on YouTube, the sorts of people I compare myself to now are kind of other YouTubers with millions of subscribers. The population for comparison changes, and I find that the more I compare, the less good I feel about the stuff that I've done. And so to get around that, I try to just A not compare at all and B also think journey before destination, all the, all of the mindset stuff, but it's easier said than done. And I still feel internally like right now, we're not using money in the company like efficiently enough. We're not hiring fast enough. We're not doing this fast enough. We're not doing that fast enough.

• 1:04:48Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think you'll ever get to a point where that stops?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:04:54Steven Bartlett?

  Because I tell you what.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's it been like for you?

• 1:04:56Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I mean, no, I was just gonna say, let's just, I mean, one way to look at it is Ali, five years ago, when you first started, if you had shown him a picture of you now.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:05:07Steven Bartlett?

  What would he have said?

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:05:10Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, like if you'd gone, if when you made those first couple of videos, you'd gone, you're going to have two million subscribers on YouTube. You're going to have hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  I would have had a stroke.

• 1:05:21Steven Bartlett?

  You would have had a fucking stroke.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  There's no way.

• 1:05:24Steven Bartlett?

  There's no fucking way. That's me.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Steven Bartlett?

  And here you are. This is what I was alluding to earlier. It's like the past version of yourself told you you'd be happy when you got here, but you're not because like you're not fully satisfied because there's a future version of yourself that's saying you'll be happy when you get here. And it just never fucking stops.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  It never stops, does it? Like it seems, it seems like, at least on the outside, that you've done a good job of kind of, I mean, obviously you're like particularly successful, but like being okay with that level of success and not trying to get to the, the next level for whatever that looks like.

• 1:05:57Steven Bartlett?

  I think so. I think so more than a lot of people I speak to. I think it's, I mean, there's still elements in me that like, I can do more and I can, I can, I can take on bigger challenges in my life.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:07Steven Bartlett?

  But I'm definitely, definitely now detached from thinking it will have any impact on the things that matter. Won't make me happier, won't make me more fulfilled, won't make me anything at all.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Steven Bartlett?

  I'll be doing it probably for either the wrong reasons.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:23Steven Bartlett?

  Like just more money, therefore I can get private jets instead of business class. Or because, um, this is not the wrong reason, but just for the challenge of it.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:35Steven Bartlett?

  Or thirdly, because I want to solve a problem in the world as opposed to believing that it will make, it will make me, it'll kill my imposter syndrome, or it'll make me feel more, you know, enough. I definitely know that I'm enough.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:06:49Steven Bartlett?

  I definitely know that much. And I know that nothing's going to change that positive one I give.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. It's a good place.

• 1:06:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, well, better because I said it in the book, didn't I? So.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  How, how do you think about money? It's a question that you often ask, ask you guys that I really want to ask you because. Yeah, obviously you are rich and but there are, there are more levels of rich beyond what you currently are. So like.

• 1:07:12Steven Bartlett?

  There always will be.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  And as you meet people, as, as, as I've met people who are kind of levels of rich above me. Where then, then I start thinking, oh, maybe. It would be nice to be able to afford to fly first class everywhere. That would be pretty cool.

• 1:07:25Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  That I, and I think I wonder if that would increase my quality of life. And I, and I know there's that, that's, you know, diminishing returns for money and stuff, but.

• 1:07:31Steven Bartlett?

  Sure.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  You know, first class versus, I wonder.

• 1:07:34Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, no.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. How, how do you think about that?

• 1:07:35Steven Bartlett?

  I mean, so I want to have enough money in my life that I don't have to do anything. That costs time that I don't need to spend.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:07:47Steven Bartlett?

  On things that I don't get joy from doing. So like, I basically want to have, so like an airport is a great example. This is why I think I want a private jet.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Steven Bartlett?

  Because when I go to the airport, you could spend three hours just checking in and getting onto the, onto the plane. And that's three hours that I'd much rather doing something I enjoy doing with my life. And as I talk about in chapter 19 of Happy Sexy Millionaire, time is what we have. I refer to these 500,000 chips we have and. We get to, you know, that's because that's how many free hours the average human being gets in their life. I would like to have more of those chips deployable against things that I really enjoy doing and creating memories with people I love. Not standing in an airport queue for three hours. So if money is going to solve that problem for me, then money does matter. It's not going to make me exponentially happier. Like the queue isn't making me miserable.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  It's not going to move the needle, but.

• 1:08:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, but I'd like to make more memories in my life with, with, with my niece and my dog, you know.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Steven Bartlett?

  And with my partner. So that is my view on money at this stage.

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:42Steven Bartlett?

  Um, co- convenience, uh, less time wasted.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:47Steven Bartlett?

  That's literally it. That's literally it. It offers me nothing else.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Steven Bartlett?

  Well, what do you think of money?

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  I think.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  I think convenience is a big thing for me. Like, I also have that thing of money is useful insofar as it helps me buy back my time, which I can then use to deploy against things that I care about. But then, as I kind of get exposed to more like rich people and see like the lives that they're living and like, you know, this idea of thinking about moving to London, where like, I've been living in my flat that me and my brother have a mortgage for in Cambridge for the last three years with a lodger and therefore it's returning 16% a year because I'm not paying rent, blah, blah, blah. I'm moving to London where it's like, I actually can't afford to buy a place in London. Like, I could afford to rent a place in London, but it's like, I could rent for a thousand a month, or two thousand, or three, or four. You know, those places that are eight

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  thousand a month are pretty good. I wonder what it would be, you know, can I afford to spend eight thousand a month on a place that's slightly nicer, that's a little bit more central? What am I optimizing for? If I forget a place in King's Cross, it's easier for friends to come visit, therefore I can make more memories, therefore increase happiness that way. And the money thing just sort of, I feel like those, those numbers keep on going up because, you know, then you could be like, well, having a yacht would be pretty cool because then I can invite friends on board and then we can do like jet skiing and stuff. Having a private jet would be really cool because then I can like fly wherever I want and save my three hours of time and take my friends out on a trip. Having enough money that I'd be able to fly friends over to visit me would be sick for my personal happiness. And I don't know, I feel like the more I think about this, the more I start to invent justifications for trying to make more money.

• 1:10:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  For the sake of happiness and fulfillment and stuff.

• 1:10:30Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Beyond the 75,000 a year that the studies will tell us leads to diminishing returns.

• 1:10:35Steven Bartlett?

  I think the key thing there, and what I've, what I said in my answer is that I don't think it will make me happier because I'm, I'm already, I think at, I don't think missing the airport queue will actually make me happier.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:46Steven Bartlett?

  I don't think it will because unfortunately, fortunately, I'm at a point where I don't think I could be happier.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:10:53Steven Bartlett?

  Like, I could definitely have less, less annoyances in my life.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:57Steven Bartlett?

  But fundamentally, I don't think I could be happier than this.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:02Steven Bartlett?

  Or more fulfilled or like comfortable than this. So me killing the queue by getting a jet is, is, is removing an annoyance and increasing the, the, yeah.

• 1:11:15Steven Bartlett?

  How intentional I am with my time.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Those extra two chips that you'll have.

• 1:11:17Steven Bartlett?

  It's not gonna move the needle.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:11:20Steven Bartlett?

  It's not gonna move the needle, like, and if this place was where we are now, which is my home, I live upstairs. If it was two times bigger, would I be happier? No, no, I wouldn't be, no.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:34Steven Bartlett?

  But, you know, I'll probably get a place two times bigger.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Steven Bartlett?

  Because I don't know, then I can have bigger parties and maybe that will be a more enjoyable memory at some point. But I don't, I, this is the key thing, as I had to at some point in my life, realise, like, not buy into the bullshit justification, or I'd live my life running, running in that direction constantly. And I say all the things, I'm like, it's not gonna make me happier.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:58Steven Bartlett?

  And if I still want it, then I think, um, then I'm, then it's okay, it's okay for me to buy.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I kind of, I kind of have, have similar things. So often I will like buy something, you know, I bought one of those six thousand pound Pro Display XDRs with the thousand pound stand that Apple sell the other day, just because.

• 1:12:17Steven Bartlett?

  No one knows what that is.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  It's like a ridiculously expensive monitor that Apple sell for like professionals. And I really didn't need it, but I was like, it would be kind of cool to have on my desk. And I knew there was zero way it was gonna make me any happier. I was like, oh, it's just, it's just kind of cool. And my housemate was like, oh, your, your monitor's arrived, how do you feel? I was like, like, just even, even contemplating how I feel as a result of the fact this monitor arrived, it's just kind of a bit baffling to me because obviously it doesn't make any difference to my day to day happiness. It was just something kind of cool that I could buy as a business expense and I thought, kind of, why not? I think when I was younger, I used to look forward to purchases more, like, you know, ordered a PlayStation game, we're tracking the delivery, waiting for it to arrive. And I was just like, it's just, it's just kind of things.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  And, and the way I often describe it to people is, which maybe sounds a bit arrogant, but it's like, I feel like my happiness is a 10 out of 10 right now. And I really can't imagine that changing, but. It's still kind of cool to spend money on the things that I want to spend money on.

• 1:13:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  If it's like tech or camera gear or something like that, something I care about.

• 1:13:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I completely agree now. And I actually don't think I'm a very flashy person. Right now, I don't own a car at this exact moment. I don't have like designer watches or anything. And typically, if I make a purchase, it's based in utility, but it's really nice.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Steven Bartlett?

  And that's kind of what you're describing with your monitor.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:36Steven Bartlett?

  So like, I travel a lot, so a suitcase or get a really nice one.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Steven Bartlett?

  But I don't need a Rolex because that's be fucking honest. No one uses it to tell the time anymore. So that would be purely about signaling and status.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Steven Bartlett?

  I don't really buy designer clothes at all. I don't really think I have any designer clothes, clothes.

• 1:13:55Steven Bartlett?

  I don't really, I mean, I have a nice pair of boots or something.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:59Steven Bartlett?

  But typically, it's like, I mean, this is like a Topman t-shirt I'm wearing from ASOS. These are Topman jeans.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Fits pretty well.

• 1:14:04Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, this like utility and fit and matters seem to matter more than insecurity driven purchases.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  This, this one mental model that I, I think of, which is that if, if you were the only person in the world, would you still buy the thing?

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  And I think when it comes to like new Apple products, yes, I would because like I can do, I can do my work better on a nicer MacBook or on a, on a nicer screen. But yeah, certainly I probably wouldn't get an Apple Watch if I was the only person on earth. Cause I think the utility of that is more signaling and more about like, this is the sort of identity I want to portray to other people. And then it is about the fact that having an Apple Watch for me, given that I'm not into running is, is actually useful.

• 1:14:40Steven Bartlett?

  You've read a lot of books, mental models about mental models and various other things. What are some of the key principles or key sort of mental models that have had the biggest impact on your life?

• 1:14:54Steven Bartlett?

  There's so many, I can imagine that it's quite hard to.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the main ones is, is this thing about the, the money diminishing returns curve about like beyond about 50 to 70K, depending on what study you look at. Money doesn't buy more happiness. I often have to remind myself of that when I get into this cycle of the pursuit of more stuff.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  One of the things, I won't really call it a mental model, but one of the, the things I often come back to is, oh, I think you talk about in the book as well, uh, five regrets of the dying.

• 1:15:20Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  And I had, have those written on the top of my to do list on my daily to do list template.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  That's, that, that's a good one. The other one is.

• 1:15:30Steven Bartlett?

  What is that for anybody that doesn't know?

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. So there, there was this like palliative care nurse or someone who. Sorry.

• 1:15:36Steven Bartlett?

  Brony Ware.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  That's the one.

• 1:15:38Steven Bartlett?

  She messaged me on Instagram.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Oh, no way.

• 1:15:40Steven Bartlett?

  When I don't, one time I didn't tag her Instagram. So she's like, oh yeah, thank you so much for the post. Could you tag, but yeah, Brony Ware, she's amazing.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Brony, yeah. So she wrote a book called The Regrets of the Dying or The Top Regrets of the Dying, where she interviewed like hundreds of people who were on the deathbed, asking them, what are your regrets? And some of the really common ones were, I wish I'd lived a life true to myself rather than what others expected of me. I wish I'd worked less hard. I wish I'd spent more time, more time with friends and family. Can you remember what the other ones are?

• 1:16:09Steven Bartlett?

  I, do you know what? I only focused on the first one. Cause she was like, she said, this was the most common regret of the dying was, I wish I'd lived a life true to myself and not what others expected of me.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Following your intrinsic motivation rather than status, prestige, external.

• 1:16:21Steven Bartlett?

  Exactly. It sounds like the other ones are all actually just.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Steven Bartlett?

  Into the bucket.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Offshoots of that.

• 1:16:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. And people, as they're about to die, must have this amazing retrospective clarity over their, what they did and didn't do right, what did and didn't matter. It didn't matter that that girl in playground said my hair was shit. Or this comment on Instagram. And that retrospective clarity, because I say this in the book as well, this is about the, I talk about how I don't think anybody believes they're going to die.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16:49Steven Bartlett?

  And those people know they're gonna die. So they have that, like, it's all, all the bullshit just fades away and they go, I just want one more day with my son.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. But also it's, it's, it's not quite the same as the whole live every day as if it were you, as if it were your last. Like there's that, that balance there. How, how do you, how do you think about that balance?

• 1:17:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. I mean, so that's actually like fundamentally bad advice, because if I were to live today like it was my last, I would probably be doing self-destructive things. Like they're gonna be self-destructive financially. Yeah, yeah. Like financially, I'd be blowing all my money. Like, yeah. So, well, something like that. But the merit in that, that I see is.

• 1:17:28Steven Bartlett?

  Is living like life itself will come to an end at some point.

• 1:17:35Steven Bartlett?

  Which for me means being very conscious about the use of your time, I guess. And what you're deciding to do.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:46Steven Bartlett?

  If they were your last, you'd be able to cut through the bullshit, that doesn't matter. And so let's say if this life were your last, live every life like it was your last would be a better thing.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  Season of life.

• 1:17:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you'd really focus on what matters. You know, you've talked about such a diverse range of topics on your YouTube channel. And really about like, help, you know, helping people as, you know, as the teacher you are. Become better at what they're trying to achieve. You talked about productivity, mindset, finance and all of these things. What are the, what are the things that you see in young people today that you think? They most need to solve and understand about, let's say, about mindset in order to get to that point where they are. Living a fulfilled life.

• 1:18:32Steven Bartlett?

  What are some of the, you know, and I say this to you because I know how many, how many, how many books you've read. Thinking specifically here about like young people and you're, you're seeing them in the comments section. You're seeing the problems that they're trying to solve in their life.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  I think the main one that I see is a mindset that work has to be suffering. And that like, working hard is like a bad thing. And that what it looks like if you're, if you're striving for something is that it, it looks like pain.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  This is very much the mindset I had going into medical school where it's like, oh, I'm now a first year medical student at Cambridge University. This is, this is supposed to be hard, you know, let's get all my big textbooks out. Let's like spend ages in the library, you know, pulling all nighters, thinking it's a badge of honor because this is what work looks like and it looks hard. And in my, from my second year onwards, where I realized, hang on, like, you know, the, the thing Tim Ferriss often says, like, what would this look like if it were easy? I think. If more young people accepted that work doesn't have to be suffering, it can actually be easy and fun. And you can have it all, provided you find ways to make it fun and optimize for the things that are enjoyable. That will solve a lot of kind of problems when it comes to the things people often ask me about, which is motivation, procrastination, burnout and all that jazz.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  I think another kind of underrated tip, which the toxic productivity people would crucify me for, is that I think everyone kind of, like, if you want to, if you want to live a life when you're on terms,

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  then you do have to solve the money problem because we all need to make money. We all need to have that. Like in, in board games, we call it, you call it as an economic engine. Like, if you, if you want to win in a board game, you always have to figure out, are you going to sell sheep? Are you going to get wood? Are you going to get owed? Are you going to get hay? Like, what is your economic engine going to be? And I think the sooner, A, the sooner that can be ticked as a box, or the more aligned the economic engine can be with the thing you actually find fun, the more you can do that thing of living life on your terms. Because what I never want to be in the position of is where, you know, that thing of, well, I just got to work the nine to five so I, so I can enjoy the five to nine. Because that's like 80,000 hours of our lives, 80,000 chips out of the 500 that we're squandering away just to survive.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  And obviously, there's, it's, it's, that's so much easier said than done. And a large amount of being able to tick that money box, being able to build that economic engine is based on kind of privilege and where you've grown up and circumstances and all that stuff. But I guess kind of from, from where you're sitting, you never had that sort of privilege growing up. And you kind of succeeded despite it. And yeah, it's just that, that thing of accepting. I think a lot of, a lot of young people, especially like the Gen Z, the, the Gen Z folks these days are in that mindset of, I care about impact, I don't care about money. I think it's very hard to live a fulfilled life if you're not like, if, if you think in that way, because then it's like, oh, I'm not going to talk about money. It's weird. Do people talk about money on the internet, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  So those would be kind of two things that I would love to implant into young people's brains.

• 1:21:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, that's a really interesting one. There's been this absolute groundswell over the last couple of years of, I think millennials are guilty of it too, just all of them want to change the world. And they don't really have a plan or have a specific route to changing the world.

• 1:21:58Steven Bartlett?

  Or having an impact, but they just want to lead with that, which sounds to me a lot like virtue signaling. Because I think the people that end up changing the world are very specific about what they're going to do. And it's very passion driven, it's very like specific, passion driven. So they'll say, you know, someone that does actually want to change the world, won't actually start with the end in mind. They'll start with, I want to study medicine so I can understand cancer. And they'll change the world, not the Gen Z that says, I want to, I want to change the world or I want to have a big impact. And you go, what do you want to impact?

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Steven Bartlett?

  They go, the world. How? You're asking too many questions. I want to have, so for me, whenever I see that in my DMs or when a kid comes up to me. When I've been speaking on stage or something goes, I want to be a public speaker. I go, well, what do you want to talk about? It's like, uh.

• 1:22:46Steven Bartlett?

  Go and have, go and live a life worth talking about, like go and have an experience, go like, go through some shit. And then you'll, the consequences, you're a public speaker. I had no intention of ever being a public speaker. It's a consequence of, of, of having some, creating a life where I had some shit to talk about, you know? And I think younger generations have that the wrong way around. They're so obsessed about, oh, wouldn't it be great to create an impact? But.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Have you, have you come across effective altruism?

• 1:23:11Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like this, um, this movement, this community that talks about how, um, doing good in the world and like having an impact. Is actually like scientifically measurable and can be done in evidence based kind of ways. And so they, you know, there's a few like charities and, um, programs tied to that. One of them is GiveWell and they, uh, do an evidence based analysis of the charities in the world to figure out. What is the most bang for your buck? What's, what's the highest ROI on money donated in terms of lives saved or some other outcome measures? And you find that it's some pretty rogue charities that, that come out top, on top here. For example, the Against Malaria Foundation.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  On average, it costs somewhere between two thousand and three thousand pounds to buy enough malaria nets to statistically be able to literally save a life.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  And that's like a lot cheaper than most people would think. And if someone were to say to you now, you know, Steve, you can donate three grand and you literally save a life. You'd be like, oh, great, I have three grand.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  And and so the idea behind effective altruism is that, given that like like you can actually measure the impact of charities. And where I was going with this is that you can therefore measure the impact of a career and relate it kind of to money if you need to. So they've done an analysis of what being a doctor is like. And in the Western developed world,

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  a doctor will save around seven lives throughout the course of their entire career. And this is not taking into account the fact that if I wasn't a doctor, the next the next person would have gone into medical school and been a doctor in my place, because in the UK, we have more people applying to medicine than there are places. If you are the only doctor in, I don't know, Sub-Saharan Africa, or in a country or something, and then you stop being a doctor, that obviously has a big impact. But most of the people listening to this are not in that position. And so the way that I think of impact is in terms of like, counterfactual impact, i.e. what is my impact compared to if I didn't if I didn't exist, if I wasn't doing my thing. And I often will see comments on videos and people being like, oh, you're a you're a sellout for leaving medicine in the middle

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  of a pandemic to like, I don't know, make YouTube videos, something something BS like that. And I'm like, yeah, I can see why that's the narrative that you're telling yourself. But actually, I'm not special as a doctor. Like, I have no unique value to add as a doctor two years fresh out of med school. Anyone, basically, who has gone through medical training in the UK, because it's pretty good medical training, could do as good a job, if not better, than I can of being a doctor. But where I have counterfactual impact, where I am kind of unique in the impact I'm providing, is in the fact that I have a YouTube channel that teaches people and inspires people's stuff. And if the kind of the DMs and stuff are anything to go by, you know, people will be like, oh, my God, I got into medical school because of your videos. I was from this background where no one ever applied to medicine, no one thought about going to Oxbridge, and I got there, you know, in part thanks to your videos. Thank you so much. And I feel like the impact I can have on

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  the world by creating content on the internet and speaking to a camera in my bedroom is arguably greater than the impact I would have kind of just being a doctor. Not that there's anything wrong with just being a doctor, of course.

• 1:26:09Steven Bartlett?

  Did you hear that, Mum? Are you listening?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  At least that's what I try and tell myself.

• 1:26:14Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you should say that to her. We'll just, we'll, we'll, we'll snippet that.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, snippet that.

• 1:26:18Steven Bartlett?

  We'll send it to her as a video.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  I'll send it to her.

• 1:26:19Steven Bartlett?

  Email it to her. So, Mum, have you seen this? I just stumbled across this. No, but I completely get that. And I think, um, I think, yeah, I think, and it's funny because me being selfish in my life has been the thing that's allowed me to help way more people. Developing my own thinking, my own skills, my own ability to do this stuff has been the, able to create a platform in which I can help more. And I spoke to a monk, or I think it was a monk, about this when I got to ask this world famous monk, he was doing this massive talk in New York. My one question was, am I selfish for having spent the last five years of my life growing wealth and developing myself and my skills?

• 1:26:55Steven Bartlett?

  Should I have run off to Africa and started trying to, you know, save one life at a time? And his response to me was that you can't pour out that for others, that which you don't have yourself. So he likened it to a bottle and said, you have to fill the bottle in and to be able to pour out into other people's glasses. So by filling your bottle, as long as you are being, um, you're doing good with your full bottle, then that's incredibly a noble thing to be doing.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, there's something that Naval Ravikant says as well, which is that if you want to have an impact, then you want to get rich and you want to get famous as well. Because people who are rich and famous just have more impact than people who are not, because you can just deploy more capital and social capital towards the things that you care about to make more of an impact. So optimizing for wealth and fame when you're young and while building skills while having fun. I think, you know, there, there are worse things.

• 1:27:45Steven Bartlett?

  Chamath talks about that as well. Chamath Papadhir?

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:47Steven Bartlett?

  Is that his name? Papadhir, he always, he on stage says that wealth allows you to impose your opinion and viewpoint on the world. So he says, who would you rather having all the money, some like rich Russian oligarch who has 75 yachts? Or me who has a desire to, um, you know, like Elon, like take us, make us multi-planetary and, and solve the carbon problem. And so with resources, you can impose your worldview of good or bad, I guess, on the world, and that is impact. Maybe we're just trying to make excuses for wanting to be ready to justify.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Having sexy millionaires is good for the world.

• 1:28:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. No, but to be fair, even this podcast, like this podcast was very expensive. It's very expensive to run. The equipment's very expensive. And this has been enabled, the people we're reaching now that are listening to this, has been purely enabled by by the five years of selfishness of me building a business for myself. I do this, as I said, I don't even know if we make a profit. I've not really looked, to be honest, from this podcast necessarily. But I do it because of the huge enjoyment it gives me and the impact that we see in the comments section and the messages we get. And that is such a selfish thing for me. It makes me feel really good.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Have you come across a book called The Elephant in the Brain?

• 1:28:57Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  Oh, this is like a whole, it's like really well written. It's like all of the studies around what drives human behavior. And the main thesis of the book is that we're all ultimately selfish. A lot of the stuff we do is for signaling. But there is like a PR secretary in our heads that convinces even us that our motives for doing something are not selfish and they're in fact altruistic.

• 1:29:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  And there's a quote from, apparently from JP Morgan, which is that a man always has two reasons for doing something, a good reason and the real reason. And so whenever people ask me, why do you do YouTube? It's always that, right? Do I want to say it's because I enjoy helping people and like making content that inspires? Or the real reason, which because, you know, social status, prestige, money, et cetera. I like being recognized in the streets. It's kind of cool. I mean, I think it's a bit of both, but.

• 1:29:51Steven Bartlett?

  And that's fine, because that's the truth.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Steven Bartlett?

  And it's the truth for everyone. There'll be someone sat at home thinking, no, no, when I give five pounds to a homeless person, I'm purely doing it because I want to give the money. I'm sure you want to, but the reason why is because it might make you feel good, right? Or because it might make you look good. And if you think I'm wrong, all you've got to do is go back in history. Whereas once upon a time. Your family members with with very similar genetics to you might have been whipping black people like and you and you wouldn't have thought that was a morally bad thing to do. Society is heavily controlling what we think is good, right, noble, virtuous. And as soon as we can admit that, I think we can actually create a better world.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:39Steven Bartlett?

  That is a vacant of this like virtue signaling. What's the right hashtag to use? What am I meant to say? Who am I meant to be for others? I think it's a form of liberation to admit that to yourself.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really good. There's a there's a phrase that a blogger friend of mine uses called servant hedonism, which is that you like by serving others and and optimizing for serving others at when you're making decisions in your life, you're in fact kind of making yourself more hedonic, more more more happy. And that is actually a reasonable. And as long as you can admit that to yourself, there's that's a pretty reasonable way of living life.

• 1:31:14Steven Bartlett?

  Listen, thank you for your time, Ali.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:31:16Steven Bartlett?

  It's been very long. Yeah, very lots of fun. And you're such a diverse character. That's really why I wanted to speak to you because you have such a wealth of knowledge across multiple sectors and industries and topics and themes. And I find that and that comes from your curiosity, I can tell. You're deeply curious, I can tell, you know. And therefore, you this is again also why I think you've done so well in as a content creator, who is an educator and a teacher, because you are your curiosity has sent you in search of answering complex questions that a lot of people don't actually have the the time or the the skill to know how to answer. And then your ability to break those conclusions down in ways that people understand that aren't alienating, that aren't two big words for me, Timothy in my bedroom, that doesn't

• 1:32:01Steven Bartlett?

  didn't go to Cambridge, is a real skill. And it's also testament to the fact that you actually understand the things you're talking about, because being able to simplify, as we know, simplify complex ideas is the is the best evidence that someone understands those ideas. So.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Thank you. That's that's very kind of you to say. And it would incredibly gracious to have me on. Your book had a big impact on me, the the mental models and their decision making, the the chip stuff with time genuinely has changed decisions that I've made in my life. So thank you for that. And if anyone's listening to this who hasn't read the book. Would recommend. Your audio book in particular, which is narrated by you.

• 1:32:32Steven Bartlett?

  Yes, yeah, yeah. And you've got a book coming soon, haven't you?

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Uh, two years from now, so.

• 1:32:36Steven Bartlett?

  Two years from now.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll reach out to you to promo that closer to the time.

• 1:32:39Steven Bartlett?

  We'll have you back on when you're ready.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:41Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much, Ali. Appreciate you.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  Thank you.