Build Multiple Income Streams, Habits To Become A Millionaire, and How To Gamify Your Productivity w/Ali Abdaal EP 1158

My guest today is Ali Abdaal. Ali is a part-time doctor in the UK and a creator online with a YouTube channel of 2 million subscribers where he focuses on how we can lead happier, healthier and more productive lives with the aim of helping people do more of what matters to them. He’s the creator of Part Time Youtuber Academy where he shares his skills, knowledge and experience of becoming a YouTuber with others.In this episode we discuss how Ali has been able to build multiple income streams that bring in over a million each year, how to turn your work into passive income over time, the habits that have set him up for success to become a millionaire, how to turn productivity into a game and how to eliminate all distractions, and we also turned this conversation into a coaching session for the both of us throughout. I kindly challenged Ali to think about what he’s aiming for and I think if you’re on the fence about where your energy and time is spent in your life right now, you’re going to get A LOT from this conversation. For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1158Check out his website: www.aliabdaal.comCheck out his Youtube page: www.youtube.com/c/aliabdaalThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1158 with Ali Abdaal.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:27Lewis Howes?

  Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Ali Abdaal. And Ali is a part-time doctor in the UK and a creator online with a YouTube channel of over 2 million subscribers, where he focuses on how we can lead happier, healthier, and more productive lives with the aim of helping people do more of what matters to them. He's the creator of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, where he shares his skills, knowledge, and expertise of becoming a YouTuber with others as well. And in this episode, we discuss how Ali has been able to build multiple income streams that bring in over $1 million each year. How to turn your work into passive income over time, the habits that have him set up for success to become a millionaire, how to turn productivity into a game, and how to eliminate all distractions.

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  And also, I turned this into a coaching session for the both of us throughout this episode. And it wasn't my intention, but I kindly challenged Ali to think about what he's aiming for. And I think if you're on the fence about where your energy and your time is spent in your life right now, then you're going to get a lot from this conversation. As I'm coaching and working with Ali, look at this as if I was coaching yourself as well in certain decisions in your life, and see what comes up for you. I'd love for you to share with me your thoughts over on Instagram, or you can tag it in the comments below, over on the YouTube channel as well on this video. And if you know someone that you think would be inspired by this, then please share this with a friend. You can text a few people, post it on social media, put it in a group chat somewhere, and leave us a review.

• 1:54Lewis Howes?

  Post your review, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts, and stay up to date with the latest and greatest on the School of Greatness podcast. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only, Ali Abdaal.

• 2:08Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We've got Ali Abdaal in the house. My man, it's good to see you all the way from the UK. How you doing?

• 2:17Ali Abdaal?

  Hey Lewis, I'm doing great. It's weird to be on this podcast because I've been listening and watching to it for so long. I just admire everything you've built up over the last like however many years. Seven years, I think?

• 2:28Lewis Howes?

  It's been about eight years now, yeah.

• 2:29Ali Abdaal?

  Eight years now, damn. It's just really cool. Yeah, I just think everything you do is just so high class and high quality. So it's a real honor to be on.

• 2:38Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it, man. And you've been exploding over the last few years as well. And it's been cool to watch your growth. You talk about productivity, you talk about passive income, and many other things. But what I'm curious about is how you've kind of transitioned from a traditional career of being a doctor to really building multiple streams of passive income on the side, which is, you know, I'm assuming has kind of surpassed your career income many times over now. And I believe that everyone wants to have this passive income coming in in their life. They would like to have a few hundred dollars coming in, or a few thousand dollars, or even more every single week or month. And you've done this successfully. You've created multiple passive streams of income. And I'm curious,

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  what were the keys for you to switch your mindset from just having one stream of income with your career to having passive multiple streams of income?

• 3:29Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, so I think I can probably trace it back to when I was 17 years old and I first read The Four Hour Workweek and came across the idea of passive income. And immediately my mind was blown and I could, you know, it's sort of like in those like Japanese animes when like the good guy gets this like special power and suddenly they can see like all the chakras around them. It was sort of that kind of moment where I had just by default been following the traditional path of just assuming that, okay, you know, I'm going to be a doctor, I'm going to make money, and then I'm going to hopefully ascend the hierarchy and eventually make enough money to buy a bigger house and then retire. And I just hadn't really considered any of those assumptions until I read The Four Hour Workweek.

• 4:12Ali Abdaal?

  And then from that point on, like, you know,

• 4:17Ali Abdaal?

  It seemed to put a terminology on something that I'd sort of been feeling anyway that, you know, maybe just the traditional career path of medicine, maybe it wasn't quite for me, but it was reading that book, The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman, which he talks about as well, that made me realize, okay, what I really want to do is I want to do medicine for fun. And then I want to make enough money to sustain myself through multiple streams of income. And so from my first year of med school onwards, when I was 18, I decided, okay, this is going to be, this is going to be the path. And, you know, that was then, that was then my hobby in the evenings. When I wasn't writing an essay or studying for an exam or hanging out with friends, I'd be tinkering away at websites and trying to slowly, slowly, slowly build these streams of passive income.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  Really? And can you explain for those who have not read The Far Work Week yet, can you explain The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman?

• 5:03Ali Abdaal?

  Ah, certainly. The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman is one of my, one of my favorite stories. Essentially, the story is that there's an American investment banker and he goes to this small coastal Mexican fishing village. And he sees this Mexican guy on the boat and the guy's like fishing a few fish. And he has some of the fish. He's like, oh, this tastes amazing. And the guy's like, yeah, you know, it's enough to support my family's immediate needs. And the American asks, well, why don't you go and fish more? Like, why are you only fishing like five fish a day? And he says, well, you know, I'm quite happy. I'm making, I'm making good money. I get to spend time with my family. I get to have a nap in the afternoons. I get to go down to the pub in the evenings to play the guitar with my amigos.

• 5:46Ali Abdaal?

  And then the American investment banker like goes on some big rant about how he's a Harvard MBA and he can kind of transform this into a business empire and how he can then get the Mexican to move to New York and then open up his own warehouse, open up his own like empire and eventually make millions 30 years down the line.

• 6:04Ali Abdaal?

  And then the kind of long story short, the Mexican kind of goes down this, you know, asks the American, okay, what next? What next? What next? And the, the clincher at the end of the story is that, well, the American says, well, that's great. You know, once you're 65, then you can retire and you'll have all that money. And then you'll be able to live in a village. You'd be able to like have a nap with your wife. You'd be able to play the guitar with your friends in the evenings. And that Story really hit me hard because it really shows the importance of building a life day to day that we enjoy and get value out of rather than the deferred life plan of like working really hard and grinding and hustling to get to the point where we have lots of money and then we're retired.

• 6:46Ali Abdaal?

  And then kind of going back to that life that we could have had much like when when we were younger. So I'm probably butchering like butchering the story. The actual version is much more concise than that. But that was a real powerful moment for me to realize that kind of day to day happiness is is what matters. And I I sort of felt maybe I wouldn't necessarily get that within the traditional career of medicine.

• 7:05Lewis Howes?

  Right? Yeah, it's a great story. It's a great kind of approach to life. It's like, okay, if you're going to work this hard to kind of relax when you're older, why not kind of incorporate some of that and integrate that philosophy in your life right now and set yourself up? And obviously, there's different seasons of life where we've got to be working hard and learning a new skill and developing and to build something in the first place is going to take time and energy to do that for a lot of people. But especially in our modern world, but there are things we can do to build up passive streams of income to hopefully not have to overwork ourselves so we can have a happier, healthier, productive life. I'm curious, what were the were the keys for you building passive income in the beginning when you started it? And how many recurring streams of income do you have today?

• 7:49Ali Abdaal?

  Ah, okay. So today, there's probably around somewhere between eight and 10 kind of big categories. And within those eight to 10 big categories, there are sort of like dozens, if not hundreds of smaller categories, which we can which we can certainly go into. I think the key, like, one of the keys at the beginning was actually learning to code.

• 8:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:08Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, like anytime I get an Instagram DM from someone being like, hey, how do I build passive income? Like, I think even even today, even in 2021, even with all the no code tools and everything out there, I still think learning to code is just a ridiculously valuable thing that anyone can do. And anyone can learn and it just immediately unlocks the ability to generate income from the internet, which you just don't really unlock when you don't know how to code. So kind of in two ways. Number one, I think when you learn how to code, then any Time you have an idea for something. So for example, when I was in med school, I had an idea that, hey, I want to help other people get into med school. And it kind of the non coder way of approaching that is, okay, cool. Let me run a course. Let me create my materials and let me advertise it to my local neighborhood.

• 8:53Ali Abdaal?

  And see if one or two students will, you know, bite and, and, and take my course. Because I knew how to code, because I knew how to make websites, because I'd been doing freelance web design for, since the age of like 13. I knew that I could make a website for this and I knew something about marketing. I knew something about ads. I knew something about content marketing. I knew something about SEO. Those were all things that I learned through the learning to code web design trajectory, which meant that when I had this idea for a business. Immediately it had a scale far greater than anyone else could have done who didn't know how to make websites and didn't know about this world, world of the internet.

• 9:24Lewis Howes?

  More than just like, let me print some flyers and put them at the coffee shop and hope someone like pulls a number and calls me randomly. And then I have one client and then, yes.

• 9:33Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's, that's one aspect of it. And then, you know, later on, a few years down the line, again, in, in medical school, what was sort of on the side while I was preparing for my med school exams. Me and my brother, we were both, you know, we both knew how to code. Neither of us did a degree in computer science or anything, but we kind of dabbled with it on the side. And so we created this software program, again, helping med students, because that was the niche that I was in. It was like an online question bank with subscription billing and an interactive kind of system with JavaScript and like react. And again, if we just, if we didn't know how to code, that wouldn't even have been a possibility, let alone something we could have created for ourselves.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Or you would have thought like, okay, I need to make some money to go hire someone to code this and try to tell them exactly what I want. And this long process of edits and clunkiness without the speed and the knowledge that you had of what you wanted to create in the moment.

• 10:23Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. And I think, I think even if we, even if, even if you do hire someone, so since then, lots of people have reached out to me saying, hey, I don't know how to code, but I have this idea. How much would it cost to hire a developer to build this thing? And that's always a hard question. It's like, well, it could be 10,000, could be 50, could be a hundred thousand. Usually that number scares people off. They're like, whoa, I was hoping it would be like $200 for some, someone in the Philippines, you know, following the Tim Ferriss method. And, you know, having, having Tried to outsource things in the past. It's genuinely really hard to outsource something, especially when you don't know about the thing that you're trying to outsource. So, you know, I I know how to edit videos being a YouTuber and therefore when I outsource editing to an editor, I know what I'm doing. Equally, when you know a little bit, at least the basics of how to code, that doesn't mean you necessarily have to code everything from scratch yourself,

• 11:07Ali Abdaal?

  but it means that you're more able to outsource that because you now have an understanding of of the landscape.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes. Okay, so you learn how to code and

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  that was one way I've really learned, like so we can code, you can develop your idea and potentially make money from that idea. There are other things.

• 11:23Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 11:24Lewis Howes?

  Is there anything else from coding that's allowed you to understand the internet besides building software and sites? Or how else can you use that skill?

• 11:32Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think the other thing about coding is that it's so. So the first one is that if you if you get an idea, then then you can just build it over the weekend and ship it and it can do quite well. I think the other the other thing of it is, again, like when when you learn to code, it unlocks an aspect of your brain and opens up your mind to ideas that you just wouldn't have had before.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  Really? Explain.

• 11:54Ali Abdaal?

  So so for example, let's say I were to generally when when people talk about coming up with startup ideas, they say that you shouldn't just try and sit down and think of a startup idea. You want to find a problem in the world, preferably a problem that you're having yourself, and then think about how you might solve that problem. So let's think a few years ago, let's say you were to think, you know what? It's a real pain in the bum trying to get a taxi because, you know, the taxis are expensive, they don't take card, you know? It's an absolute nightmare. Now, if if you're not a coder, you think, okay, this is a problem. I wish someone solved it. But if you're a coder, you think, huh, this is a problem. Hmm. Right. What would it take to solve this problem? Well, I guess all we really need is a middleman app that connects taxis with people who want taxis.

• 12:39Ali Abdaal?

  And I suppose you could build that by essentially making a database, by having one table of taxi drivers, having one table of passengers, be it filter figuring out some kind of integration with Google Maps API, figuring out some kind of payment system, maybe using Stripe. And all of a sudden, you've built a very prototype version of Uber or Lyft in your head because you know how to code. And if you don't know how to code, you just wouldn't, your mind wouldn't even go in that direction. But if you do, it does. And that is where a lot of the most interesting and most profitable businesses over the last like two decades have come from. People who know a little bit about how to code, being able to apply that knowledge to a problem they're having, and then kind of, you know, the rest is history.

• 13:15Lewis Howes?

  Coding seems like it can be very daunting for people that have no understanding of it. What would you be doing? What other skill would you have taken on to generate passive income if you didn't learn coding?

• 13:27Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, interesting. If I wasn't going down the coding route, I would, I would learn how to edit videos.

• 13:37Ali Abdaal?

  And that's because basically every single YouTuber above about 5,000 subscribers hates editing videos and needs someone to edit their videos. And there are so few YouTubers who actually outsource their editing. Because to them, it feels too hard. It feels like, oh, I could never do this. No one can match my style. And I know, I know hundreds of YouTubers at this point who are making good money, who would pay to outsource editing if someone made it easy for them. And so if I were, let's say I were 14 years old and I wanted to create a side hustle, or let's say even I were like, I don't know, 26 or 35 or whatever. And I wanted to create income on the internet. I would learn how to edit videos. I have a Skillshare class on this that people can access for free. In two hours, you learn how to edit videos from zero to YouTuber level using Final Cut.

• 14:22Ali Abdaal?

  So you just take a course or just follow free YouTube tutorials because they're all for free anyway. You learn how to edit videos within a few days. And at this point, you can then outsource, you can then market your services as video editor to other YouTubers. This is not passive income, but I think one of the things with passive income is that you have to start with active income initially and then you passivify it over time. It's very, very difficult to just go straight for the passive income.

• 14:45Lewis Howes?

  Right. How would you passify it over time as a video editor or as a coder? If you weren't doing it yourself, product to product?

• 14:55Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, so I think as a coder, the key would be building a product. So software as a service or some kind of app.

• 15:04Ali Abdaal?

  Those are the sorts of things that you build at once and you can sell it multiple times. And then obviously, you know, the marketing angle comes in, the sales angle comes in, and you start to learn so much about these sorts of fields. And even if the thing doesn't fail, you know, I tried building apps and websites for seven years before anything was successful. But all of the lessons I learned throughout that time, yeah. Yeah, because I started aged age 13 and I was doing freelance web design. Every year, me and my friends would come up with an idea that, oh, we're going to make money through this.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  This is the next big thing.

• 15:33Ali Abdaal?

  Next big thing, 100%. We tried like MLM, multi-level, multi-layer marketing. We tried like pyramid schemes. We tried the whole, we tried everything and it all failed, but it was all such a good learning opportunity, such that when I was 19 and I had the first idea that was actually successful, I knew enough to be able to build it myself. So I think on the coding front, you passive, you passify it by creating a product, a digital product. I think on the video editing front, there are two ways to passify that. Way number one is to teach the thing. So there are still loads of people out there who want to learn video editing and teaching something, turning into consulting, turning into a course and probably not an ebook for editing, but that kind of stuff is passive income.

• 16:14Ali Abdaal?

  The alternative way to do it would be to kind of build a, essentially a services agency. Like if you really understand the market of being a YouTuber and this is probably the business I would be in if I lost everything else. I would, I would start editing videos for other YouTubers. I'd initially offer my services for free for 30 days. I'd make it super easy for them to say yes. And then once I've got a few clients, I would then hire my own team to edit the videos for them. And I would just be the final, kind of final cut, like final level of, the final level of quality control and build up that sort of agency system over time where I'd be able to say to any YouTuber, look, we can edit your videos. We're priced competitively, the quality is really good and we'll take care of it. And it wouldn't, again, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be passive as such in that I would have to do a lot of work to build up the business.

• 16:59Lewis Howes?

  It would be scalable.

• 16:59Ali Abdaal?

  The skills I'd be learning along the way. Yeah, it's extremely scalable at that point.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Right. What is the top three revenue streams that you have on a monthly basis? You don't have to say the specific numbers unless you want to, but what are the top three revenue streams?

• 17:16Ali Abdaal?

  So all three are.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  You said you have nine, right? There's nine roughly.

• 17:21Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, nine roughly. So I'd say the top one is a live online course that I teach called the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. That's something that started about a year ago. In that time, we've taught over a thousand students. I think we've done about $2 million in revenue, of which about $1.5, $1.6 million is profit, which is pretty good, and it's been really fun.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  In one year. Yeah, that's great.

• 17:42Ali Abdaal?

  In one year. Yeah, so that's our, our sort of, that's, I wouldn't really call that passive income. It's very like active in that it's a six-week live course. I'm on Zoom calls all the time, helping people out. It's a very high-touch, very accountability and community-focused. So that's revenue stream number one. Revenue stream number two is actually Skillshare. This is completely passive, and it is completely mind-blowing how much money you can make from Skillshare. So I started making Skillshare courses in September 2019, so actually about two years ago now. And the very first course I made was just a how-to-edit videos in Final Cut, because I'd been doing it for two years at that point. I didn't really have any experience beyond that, but I just filmed myself editing one of my own videos and talking through it. And that class, Skillshare class, took me one day to film,

• 18:27Ali Abdaal?

  and I hired a freelancer for two days to edit it for about $500. And that class has been making somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000 a month, every single month since September 2019 for the last two years, without me doing anything marketing at all. I just have a link to it in my YouTube descriptions, and people find it through YouTube, people find it through Skillshare itself. And it's just insane how much money just that one class makes.

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  What's the revenue split for Skillshare?

• 18:55Ali Abdaal?

  The way it works is that you get paid per minute of watch time. And so.

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 19:01Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, it's sort of like Spotify streaming royalties. And so I, last time I checked, the number was round about somewhere between 3 and 5 cents per minute of premium watch time. So if someone has a Skillshare account, and they watch your thing for five minutes, you'll make like 15 cents. But if you have, I don't know, a few thousand, a few tens of thousands, a few hundreds of thousands of people are doing that, that really adds up. And so

• 19:23Lewis Howes?

  So they have to buy the course or is it a free course?

• 19:26Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, so it's sort of like Netflix in that people have a subscription to Skillshare and then they can watch anything on the platform.

• 19:31Lewis Howes?

  For free after that. Yeah, they don't have to buy the course. Yeah, gotcha.

• 19:35Ali Abdaal?

  And Skillshare has a pretty good affiliate program as well where anyone, in fact, this is a good way of generating passive income for anyone. Anyone can become an affiliate for Skillshare. And if if someone just signs up for a free trial, they pay somewhere between seven and $10 per sign up.

• 19:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:49Ali Abdaal?

  And so each month we make about $15,000 just off of a Skillshare free trial signups. And another like 50, $60,000 per month off of people just watching the courses that we've made over the last two years.

• 20:02Lewis Howes?

  So that one course brings in 2 to 5,000, but 50 to 60,000 a month on all the courses you have there.

• 20:08Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, we've got about like eight, somewhere between eight and 10 courses on Skillshare.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:11Ali Abdaal?

  And every, every quarter, every, every few months, we just think, you know what, let's make another one. And we've got an endless list of like course ideas.

• 20:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 20:18Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. And the nice thing about doing a course is that like there's, there's just an endless amount of stuff to teach. And because for me, teach, teaching is the thing that I'm most passionate about and the thing that brings me like intrinsic joy. Far more so than saving lives as a doctor or even, even the coding thing. I, I've always been super into teaching since like the age of 13. And so it's pretty easy for me to like learn something and then teach it to other people through camera. And I enjoy doing it. So it's that perfect match of a thing that pays well, a thing that adds value to the world and a thing that I personally enjoy doing as well.

• 20:51Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool. Okay. So you've got the Skillshare and then what would be the third biggest revenue stream?

• 20:57Ali Abdaal?

  Probably third biggest is actually YouTube AdSense. So I think these days we're making somewhere between 40 to $50,000, 30 to $50,000 a month off of YouTube AdSense. And it's actually, most of that money comes from our older videos. So videos that I made three years ago, four years ago, two years ago are generate, are still generating money each month. And that's why anytime I make a YouTube video, I sort of consider it, um, I sort of consider it as their own asset class. It's sort of like an investment, you know, real estate or crypto is an asset class. And you put money in and you expect that money to grow over time. It's sort of the same that if you make a YouTube video, you put the effort in once over a few hours to make the video. And then, once it's on the platform and hopefully it's evergreen, people are just watching that as long as it's good.

• 21:43Ali Abdaal?

  And then you just keep on making money. And so we've got like, I don't know, 400 videos on the channel. And each one brings in a few dollars a day. But, you know, at scale, that ends up being somewhere between 30 and 50K every month.

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty fun to watch, isn't it?

• 21:58Ali Abdaal?

  It's pretty fun to watch, yeah. It's, it's not very funny in the early days when nothing is happening.

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

  I mean,

• 22:02Ali Abdaal?

  but it's like any kind of compounding.

• 22:04Lewis Howes?

  I didn't make money for, I don't know, first five years of really, when I, I was on YouTube, I don't know, a long time ago, 2006 maybe, but just playing around, but it wasn't until five years, six years ago where I started to be more consistent. But I didn't make any money, literally any money. One, because I didn't turn on YouTube ads. And so, because I was just kind of like, ah, I don't want to, I just want to have free value out in the world. I just want to help people, you know, I don't want to have sleazy like car commercials before my videos or something or whatever. And so I made zero money. I was just investing a lot. But then when we turned it on about a year and a half ago, I was like, oh, this is a lot of fun. You can see the payoff of years of work, of years of adding value, of years of showing up for people.

• 22:46Lewis Howes?

  And those are like assets, you know, people continue to find them, they continue to watch them. So now I'm getting paid those, you know, returns, those dividends for the time that we put in years ago, which is, which is nice to see. Because on other social media channels, you've got to work hard to try to get attention or get people to watch something in the first eight hours, and then it kind of goes away and you're not monetizing it. So that's why I like YouTube as a platform, because it's evergreen. You know, it doesn't have to be like this new timely trend thing that goes away in two days and no one sees on your stream.

• 23:21Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think that's one of the great things about YouTube and we've touched on again, like one of the secrets of passive income, which is that it really is just about adding value consistently over a very, very, very long time. And then you just kind of automatically make money. You don't even have to think about it very hard if you're doing stuff like YouTube. And I think one mistake I see a lot of people make is that they focus on the income side of it too early and they don't recognize that ultimately money is just an exchange of value. And so if you can show up, you know, week after week, like you've been doing for the last eight years, then you, of course, you're going to make money. Like you would not make money. The more value you add to the world, the more the market rewards that. And the nice thing about the sort of stuff that you and I make, generally educational content, stuff that inspires people to live better lives. You don't need to be sensational about it.

• 24:06Ali Abdaal?

  You don't need to be too clickbaity. You just need to make stuff that's useful, that's helpful to some people, and it just adds up over time.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  That's it. Well, would you say there are some of the habits that have helped you think this way and start earning more money? Are there a few specific habits that you've learned or things you learned the hard way not to do that you've been consistent on now in kind of developing these revenue streams?

• 24:30Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, that's a good question. So I think one habit is that basically, basically, anytime I find myself trading my time for money, I always think, okay, this is fine for the short term, but it's definitely not where I want to be in the long term. And so this is why I'm not really a fan of like, you know,

• 24:48Ali Abdaal?

  medicine, for example, trading time for money, consulting, coaching, trading time for money, like however we spin it. And I always think, okay, how can I take this value that I'm offering in exchange for my time and turn it into some sort of product that can preferably live on the internet where you benefit from the scale of the internet, the zero cost of distribution, the zero cost of reproduction. And so, you know, if initially people are, you know, initially my med school admissions business started because people were coming to me and I was offering them tutoring on how to ace their med school interviews. And then I thought, you know what, let's productize this into a course. And then I would teach a course and now I can teach it to 30 people at a time. And I'm still trading my time for money, but it's now at a greater scale. And then the next step is, okay, let's take my time out

• 25:33Ali Abdaal?

  of it. Let's hire someone else to teach instead. Let's build a team around it. And then let's turn it into an online course where now I've done the work once and I never have to do it ever again. And so I think that sort of way of thinking is one habit that's, that's really helped over time.

• 25:47Ali Abdaal?

  Um, I think another one, which is a bit like underrated in this is I always try my very best to enjoy the journey. And I think like people often say like, how do you, how do you stick to doing YouTube videos for so many years before it's, before it's successful, before it starts to make money? And I generally think the only real way to do it is to find ways to enjoy the process and.

• 26:08Lewis Howes?

  When you're not making money, that's the key is how do you enjoy it when you're not making any money? When you're working actually really hard, more hours than you need to, to create something, or then maybe you want to, but you're like, you know what? I'm enjoying this process, even if I don't make money. And I think that's, and I, not, not to interrupt you, but for a second, I started my podcast with the intention of, I want to create something that's fun for me, that adds value to others. And I'm going to do it for a year. I'm going to do it every week for a year and I'm, my intention is not to make money in the first year. Eventually I would like to make money, but the first year for me was all about, how do I learn this new skill that I've never done before? Podcasting, I had no clue what I was doing. How do I have great conversations with people so I can learn something?

• 26:52Lewis Howes?

  And, and you know, improve my life. And then how can I share this in a way that other people get value from listening as well? And I remember saying, I don't want to have any sponsors. I don't want to sell anything for the first year. I just want to become better. And then after year one, I'll reassess and see if I like it, if it's working, if it's not working. And then if I want to start making money, how to make money. And that approach really supported me. And I feel like because I was so clear in my intention and I came from that space, not how do I make as much money or this, but how do I add as much value? Sponsors started coming very quickly and I was kind of like shying them away. Because I was like, well, let me just keep figuring this out and get better. And then it just, it just started coming, you know, in lots of different ways.

• 27:37Lewis Howes?

  And I was thinking, okay, maybe there's just advertising, but then people said, well, can you write a book about this? Can you do a course about this? Can you do a live event? So we can all come together, this community? Can you do coaching? Can you do a mastermind? Like all these things came from just trying to be good at one thing. And it sounds like it's what's worked for you as well. Like you just did YouTube because you enjoyed creating YouTube videos. And then all these revenue streams started to come after you said, let me focus on adding value to people first.

• 28:06Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I really like that line that you said, which is like, I think, I think you said, how do I do something that's fun for me that adds value to others? I think that's just the key. Like, if you can do something that's fun for you and adds value to others, then you're just bound to make money at some point over the long term with a long enough time horizon.

• 28:26Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think, I think for me, like, I didn't, I didn't set out to make YouTube videos kind of just for fun. I always like, in the back of my mind, there was always the possibility that, okay, I want to, I could monetize this further down the line. Again, like you, I, I thought if I can hit, I don't know, 4,000 subscribers in my first year, then that would be the dream. And at 4,000 subscribers, I'd be making like $10 a month or something from, from, from YouTube. And so I just didn't really consider the monetization side of it very much, other than kind of content marketing for my existing business. But I think that's like, again, one of the, one of the main habits that helps with this stuff. Like, either you're lucky enough to stumble upon something that's just intrinsically fun by default.

• 29:08Ali Abdaal?

  So actually, like, like for me, making YouTube videos was pretty fun in the early days in particular. Cause you're creating something and you're getting instant feedback and you're seeing a sense of progress. And these are all things that we know, the research tells us and personal experience tells us, these are all things that make an experience more fun. But then I think the trick was over time, how, like, how do we keep it fun? And find ways to make it more fun. So like building progress and building a sense of accomplishment and doing it with friends. I found that making up friends with other YouTubers, engaging more with the community, really thinking about how I could help people, all of these were very deliberate things I did to make sure it was fun over the long term. Cause otherwise I would have just burned out from doing it.

• 29:48Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. And it's something I, you know, I've been doing this for eight and a half years now and I've done 1,150 episodes. And so-

• 29:58Lewis Howes?

  You've got to, you know, I've had to learn and continue to keep it interesting and fun. Doing the same thing over and over because consistency is one of the keys to long-term success. Is like you showing up consistently, like you did 400 videos, that's consistency over time. And enjoying it is part of long-term success as well because we're doing something you don't enjoy and it's a drag and you know, it takes your energy. It's gonna be hard to keep doing it, keep showing up. So we're always kind of innovating and creating new formats and creating, you know, meeting new people. And I just have a fascination for learning, which is kind of, I guess, one of the skills that makes it work for me. Um, but it's always got to constantly innovate and improve and grow to make sure that you're, you're staying excited as well. When you do something for so long.

• 30:43Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm curious in that front about you, like. Like I'd, I'd love to be at the point eight years from now where I've done 1,150 podcast episodes. How, how do you keep it fun? Like what are, what are the, what are the levers you pull to, to make sure it's still fun for you?

• 30:56Lewis Howes?

  Uh, well, first off, I'm fascinated by the topic of, of. That I'm interviewing or the guests that I'm interviewing, I'm always fascinated by the people. So I don't choose people I'm not interested in. I'm like, I want to know more about this person. I want to know the way they think. I want to know the way they sleep at night. I want to know what they dream about. I want to know. The challenges they overcame, I want to know what makes them tick. So I think just that obsession of curiosity about people makes it interesting for me. Um, you know, we're constantly evolving the, the, the show structure, the format. Uh, we have a new set, so it's like a different energy and different environment. Uh, the team continues to build and grow and they bring new ideas and they.

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  They'll offload some of the energy that might've took me for the first few years and now they're able to take on some of that. Um, you know, hitting certain milestones and. Seeing things where they take off and it's like, oh, this video went viral and this audio is really doing well and we're in the top charts and. You know, all the opportunities that we can build and create and come from it. Also, probably the thing that. Keeps me most excited. If I'm, if I'm really thinking about, those are all good things, but the thing that keeps me most excited. And passionate and driven. Is the impact we make. And every week we talk about on our team calls, we talk about the, the testimonials or the reviews or. The life-changing messages that people.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Write in, whether it be YouTube comments or on a podcast review or on an email or whatever it may be. How one moment or one thing they listen to or one thing they watch, they implemented, whether it be from me or one of the experts we've had on, they implemented that strategy and something transformed in their life. They got out of a toxic relationship. They, they finally got the divorce after 10 years of thinking about it. They had the courage to go ask the person out. They stopped smoking. They got healthy again. They started sleeping better. They went to therapy, whatever it is. And they say, thank you for this moment. It helped me improve the quality of my life. And that's what really drives me is like, okay, we're here to serve people. We're here to add value to people. And I think,

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  again, if you do something you enjoy, that also adds value to someone or someones, then that is the golden ticket in my mind. And if you can make money with it, then now we're really talking.

• 33:14Ali Abdaal?

  How, so I'm just pretty curious about this. How do you,

• 33:20Ali Abdaal?

  how do you combat that thing? So when it comes, when it comes to my YouTube channel, one, one problem that I have is that I feel like I'm constantly chasing more, like more subscribers, more revenue, more success. I often think like, what, what's, what's the point? But, and you know, a few years ago, if someone had told me I'd be at 2 million subscribers, I would have had a stroke because it just completely, completely outside of the world of possibility. But now it's like, oh, 2 millions, it's good, but like 3 million would be better.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  I know, but like, there's one of your friends on 10 million, you know, it's like.

• 33:51Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, exactly. How, how do you think about like the pursuit of more?

• 33:57Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think the universe is always expanding. I think we're designed to grow. I think we're, we're meant to evolve and develop and grow ourselves, whether it be with wisdom or experience or, you know, our health, we're meant to grow, in my opinion. And if we're not growing, then we're slowly dying. And if a business is not growing, then it's eventually going to be out of business. If your health is not improving the quality of growth in a healthy way, then eventually your body will be out of business, out of commission. It'll get sick. It'll cause, you know, get disease or it'll die. And I think spiritually as well, if we're not spiritually. evolving and growing and seeking more wisdom and seeking more spiritual growth than our soul or our, you know, our,

• 34:43Lewis Howes?

  our hearts will start to suffer and we'll start to lose sense of meaning and purpose. And that will start to die. So for me, I think it's extremely healthy when you're running a business to track and measure things to keep you excited about growth. But I tie it to, well, how can we continue to grow so we can serve more people? It's not about how can I get more subscribers to feel good, to look good because I, you know, comparing myself to other YouTubers. But okay, we just got 70,000 new subscribers in this last 30 day window, or I guess 28 day window on YouTube shows. So that's 70,000 new potential lives that we can impact.

• 35:25Lewis Howes?

  And what do they need right now? What's the message they need? What, what question do I need to ask? To really serve at the highest level? And how do I ask questions that hit the most number of people that they might be asking? And how can we continue to show up and service to these 70,000 people? We tie it to a mission of ours, which is to serve 100 million people weekly. And it's a big mission. And we're nowhere near that, right? We're nowhere near that mission yet. But because that's our mission to serve 100 million lives weekly, to help them improve the quality of their life, to help them grow, to help them overcome challenges they face, fear, anxiety, worry, uh, to help them feel more peace and love. Because that's our mission, we think about serving those individuals and

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  and so it's exciting to attract a team, uh, on our team that's committed to the same mission. That's not just thinking about growth to look good. And I'm not saying you're thinking about that, but or, or comparison game or anything, but it's thinking about this 70,000 people this month that have subscribed 10 million views on YouTube this month that have watched, you know, cool, let's keep growing. We're not at our mission yet. Who do I get to become? In order to reach more people and serve at a higher level, what, what skills do I need to develop? What limiting beliefs do I get to let go of so that I can reach more people as we can think in a different way? So I can be the coder example like you. I have a coding skill in my mind

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  that allows me to expand the ability to reach more people quickly or create the video that I know will hit or whatever it might be to attract. And so that's the way I think about it. Um, you know, in some months it goes down and as you've seen and like the revenue goes down and the subscribers are less and you're like, ah, you know, it's never fun to see that happen. But as you know, as human beings, we can't breathe in 24/7. We've got to breathe out. You know, there's things that have to expand and then contract and expand and contract and continue to to evolve. You know, you know this more than anyone as a, you know, someone who's studied the the human body. Um, and so

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  you, like you said, going back to the journey, really enjoying the journey of all of it. Okay, we had a great month. Let's celebrate. Okay, we were down a little bit this month. Let's celebrate. We still impacted millions of lives. Let's celebrate it. You know, why are we getting upset about like, ah, it didn't grow as much? You know, the goal is to keep growing every day, but um, you learn in the down months as well. And it makes you not get too comfortable. It makes you evolve. It makes you think differently. It makes you, okay, what's the skill? Maybe we need another person on our team to help us here. Maybe I need to evolve as a leader. And I think all those things play play into it.

• 38:07Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, no, that's the, that's, that's so great to hear you say that. Um, I've been kind of thinking, thinking along along the same lines. I think in in the early days of the channel, my motivations for it were a lot more selfish, like, oh, I want the views, I want the subscribers, I want the revenue and stuff. And now we've gotten to a point where like, I don't really need any more money to be happier. And so that's not really the point. And I know something that you talk about in the book is vision setting and defining the the kind of vision for your life. And I, in in the past, I would have been like, oh, that's all, it's all spiritual BS, like, who cares? And now I'm like, oh, my God, like, vision is so important, like figuring out what I actually want to do. What does my life look like three, five, 10 years from now?

• 38:49Ali Abdaal?

  And it is often focused around that question of impact. And for me, it's like, how can I, like, The way that I I think about it in my head weirdly is I want to have the same impact on other people that Tim Ferriss had on me through his stuff. And so how do we do that? Well, that involves reaching a lot of people, which in which means we grow. Perfect. Cool. It involves having a quite like a breadth of impact. Initially, he was quite focused on a few things, but then through the podcast and kind of similar to your stuff. Yeah, it's it's really expanded, but also depth of impact. And so kind of going deep on certain topics, long form interviews, maybe even in person meetups and teaching in real life and all of that stuff I think would just be really, really cool.

• 39:32Ali Abdaal?

  So yeah, I try my best to think more impact rather than selfish.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  It is interesting. I mean, for me, I have a very similar story about how I started where I was transitioning, playing arena football here in the United States, got injured. I was I had a surgery in my wrist and I was living in a cast, a full arm cast for six months like this that did a bone graft on the wrist, took a bone out of the hip, put it in the wrist. So I wasn't able to turn the wrist or bend the arm for six months. And I was kind of in this position, which was just not as an athlete who's like always using your body. It was it was not fun. And that that was in end of August and that so for the next six months I had that on. And that Christmas, my my family and I did, I guess, I don't know if you guys do Secret Santa in the UK,

• 40:21Lewis Howes?

  but they did Secret Santa where it's like you just you give one gift and you get one gift. You know, it's kind of like what we did that year. And I remember I got one gift from and my brother was like choosing me as his, you know, picked me out of the hat and he got me the gift. And he didn't even wrap the gift. He's like a very tough like here you go. I hope you enjoy it. He just gave me a book in a bag that he got from Barnes and Noble and he said, here you go. And it was the four hour work week. And I remember and I remember, you know, he got a guy who's dyslexic, who doesn't like to read a book for Christmas. And I was like, okay, but something about the title grabbed me. It was in a transition in my life. I my dream was over. I thought I was going to be playing football for years.

• 41:02Lewis Howes?

  I didn't even think about, you know, building a business or online marketing, none of that. I didn't even know about the internet. Really, I was just kind of like, okay, my dream is over. What do I do with the rest of my life? And I read this book in three days. And I remember at the end, I was just like going down every rabbit hole from this book. Every page, I was like checking out online and trying these things. And I became obsessed with learning about the internet, online marketing. You know, building, building networks through social media, doing online events, creating products. I invented a product, like all these things. And his book was kind of the catalyst for me to then go explore and learn from other people and learn other strategies.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  And, uh, you know, I feel like all roads lead back to Tim Ferriss's For Our Work Week for so many of us. That was an eye opener for us. That was a catalyst. In my first book, I wrote a whole page or two in the end of my book, like dedicating, you know, acknowledging Tim for being a pioneer. And, you know, think about it, he wrote one book that impacted me, that impacted you and thousands and millions of other people that have then built their own millions of person communities, have created content or businesses that have served so many people around the world. And I think it's cool that you and I could do something similar. We can be a catalyst for someone to then transform or go create something that could

• 42:25Lewis Howes?

  hopefully impact hundreds or thousands or millions of lives in their, in their experience as well. And I think that's, that's cool that we both have a similar story there.

• 42:36Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think the thinking of impact in this way is, is really interesting. One thing that I struggle with to this day is this decision to kind of go part-time as a doctor and not do it full-time. And I'd often get a lot of comments being like, oh my God, how can you like, you know, leave medicine in the middle of a pandemic, et cetera, et cetera. And it really got me thinking like about, about the question of impact because, you know, if people have done like statistical analyses on this, like, you know, the, the impact of an individual doctor in a country like the UK, uh, which is a very developed country, has a surplus of people wanting to get into med school. The impact of an individual doctor is maybe over the course of an entire career, you'll

• 43:21Ali Abdaal?

  save, um, about seven or eight lives, which is pretty good. But it doesn't take into account the the counterfactual impact. So if I wasn't a doctor, the next person would have gotten into med school in my place and would have been a doctor in my place because there is a surplus. It's not like I'm in, I don't know, Sub Saharan African country where I'm the only doctor or something like that. And so the actual impact of me being a doctor is so, so, so little. And I think that's a very uncomfortable thing for a lot of people to get their heads around that. Impact can be had in a way like inspiring people to do something or teaching other people or inspiring people to start, start, start a business or create content, which then ultimately serves others.

• 44:00Ali Abdaal?

  And I think there's often, at least kind of from some of the, some of the messages I get, there's often an undercurrent that if you do something that makes money, that is bad. But I think these people fail to realize that money is created as a result of providing value. And so I've, you know, I'm, I'm trying to become more okay with this sort of impact, the sort of impact that you and Tim and people have, rather than the direct impact of, oh, I've helped this person by putting a, putting an IV into their arm and giving them a drug.

• 44:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:29Ali Abdaal?

  You know, something I struggle with to this day.

• 44:30Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, you know, there's, there's doctors in the US who are bigger personalities that have TV shows that also do surgeries like once or twice a week. You know, they're still practicing and they're making a big impact with their TV show or their content. I know those doctors.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  But I'm curious, because this is the second time you've mentioned this. We talked about this before we started recording as well. What would it look like if in the next 30 days, just a hypothetical scenario, you completely stopped being of service in that way, hands on, one on one as a doctor? How would it make you feel right after you made that decision? I'm done practicing.

• 45:11Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, it would feel very scary.

• 45:15Ali Abdaal?

  And I think it would it would feel very scary. Mostly for selfish reasons in that I would worry that. Oh, but like, you know, I built my brand off of being a doctor and being a medical student and what, you know, if if I'm not a doctor, then I'm just just a YouTuber. And that feels like less less legit for some reason.

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  How long have you been a practicing doctor?

• 45:38Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, so I graduated med school in 2018 and then I worked full time for two years and then I've been kind of very part time since then.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 45:45Ali Abdaal?

  It's only been two years.

• 45:47Lewis Howes?

  So two years you've been practicing.

• 45:48Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, two years practicing, yeah, and then six years, six years of med school before then.

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 45:53Ali Abdaal?

  So it would it would feel scary in that sense. It would feel scary in the sense of. Like, I think even now I can still convince myself that this, the YouTube channel, the business, everything else. I can still sort of convince myself that it's all it's all just a side hustle. It's not my main gig.

• 46:08Lewis Howes?

  Even though you're making more doing this than you are as a doctor.

• 46:11Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. But still, but still in my mind, I think I'm very risk averse. Uh, I don't like to do the whole, oh, quit your job and figure it out thing. I very much want a solid, solid, solid foundation before I quit the job.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like you've got a solid foundation of nine passive revenue streams and multiple six figure sources of income every month.

• 46:30Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't really make any logical sense, but I think that those those would be the two main fears. The the fear of um, losing out over time, the fear of not being seen as credible or legitimate enough by just being a YouTuber. The fear of not having that like. Old world prestige of medicine, which is not quite the new world prestige of being a YouTuber. Though, but but those are all selfish things. I wouldn't be concerned at all about not having an impact on people because I know that I'm I'm not special as a doctor. Like, anyone in my position will do the same thing.

• 47:01Lewis Howes?

  You're not the best doctor in the world. You're not like the most specialized expert in what you do. There's.

• 47:06Ali Abdaal?

  Absolutely.

• 47:06Lewis Howes?

  Not that you're not talented, but there's tons of people that can do what you do.

• 47:10Ali Abdaal?

  Exactly. Yeah, I'm a junior doctor. I'm two years fresh out of med school. I follow guidelines. I follow the evidence.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  They could probably do it.

• 47:16Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  They could probably do it better than you because they obsess over it.

• 47:20Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, the people who obsess over it could probably do it better than me as well.

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  They go all in on it. So in a sense, you're doing a disservice by. Giving 10% of your time and energy to helping people in a in a in an area as opposed to the people that really want to do it full time.

• 47:34Ali Abdaal?

  Hmm. Yeah, that is a interesting way of looking at it. I had had quite thought of that. Um.

• 47:40Lewis Howes?

  I mean, imagine, imagine me, me showing up at your office and saying, is this the thing you love doing the most? Are you the top person in this or you care about being the best and like researching, obsessing this and masterminding with all the other doctors to make sure that this is the right decision for me as your patient? And you said, you know, well, I kind of just dabble in this like a little part time and I just, you know, really I've got nine other revenue streams on the side that are my main thing. And this is just something that I kind of hold on to because I want to feel good.

• 48:12Ali Abdaal?

  Hmm.

• 48:14Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think I'd.

• 48:16Ali Abdaal?

  That's a good point. The way I, I kind of see it is.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  I'm not trying to make you wrong here or make a decision here. I'm just trying to shed light on a possibility. Because as you continue to grow, if you've got four million YouTube subscribers, five million YouTube subscribers, 10 million, are you still going to be wanting to practice? Maybe. Um, but as more and more your time and energy goes towards impacting millions and millions, as opposed to one on one every day, I guess it all just depends what you want. I know there's other doctors that do YouTube and are practicing full time and they make it work.

• 48:54Lewis Howes?

  But is that your mission? And that's why I go, always go back down to like mission and vision. And maybe it is, maybe it's like, I want to be a doctor for the next 30 years and let that credibility lead with my decisions. And so people see me in that way, but you don't need that. It sounds like to also make an impact and make an income and have fun.

• 49:12Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point. Um.

• 49:16Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think if I, if I think of my mission or and all that stuff, it, it always comes down to teaching. It never comes down to practicing as a doctor.

• 49:24Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 49:25Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 49:26Lewis Howes?

  Teaching, you've got five to seven classes on Skillshare. You've got your teaching on YouTube all the time.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So what would it look like if you had 10 million subscribers? Would you be like, oh, maybe I don't need to do this doctor thing? If you had five million, or would you want to keep holding on to giving 10% effort to helping people in one area of your life?

• 49:48Ali Abdaal?

  I think it's it's sort of like that question of what does enough money look like that? Because I think for me, holding on, holding on to medicine, I'm kind of doing it because of risk aversion.

• 50:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 50:01Ali Abdaal?

  I'm doing it because of, yeah, I'm doing it because of a sense of, oh, okay. If the YouTube thing doesn't work out, then I've got this as a fallback option.

• 50:08Lewis Howes?

  This is very irrational.

• 50:11Ali Abdaal?

  I know.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  So how many, I mean,

• 50:13Ali Abdaal?

  Please talk me out of this. This is good.

• 50:14Lewis Howes?

  On the scale of, okay, of your nine revenue streams.

• 50:17Ali Abdaal?

  Yep.

• 50:19Lewis Howes?

  How far down does your income as a doctor fit?

• 50:24Lewis Howes?

  How much you make as a doctor monthly on average?

• 50:27Ali Abdaal?

  If if I were working full time about.

• 50:29Lewis Howes?

  No, part time right now.

• 50:31Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, part time right now.

• 50:31Lewis Howes?

  Your current, your current money you're making right now as a doctor, how much you bring in a month?

• 50:35Ali Abdaal?

  Two hundred dollars a month.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  Two hundred dollars a month is all you bring in?

• 50:39Ali Abdaal?

  Correct.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  And you're holding on to, so let me ask you this, if you had a $200 a month ebook that came in and it took you, I don't know, 40 hours a month to maintain it for 200 bucks.

• 50:51Ali Abdaal?

  Okay, so so the reason I'm holding on to it is it's not because of that income, it's more like if I,

• 50:56Lewis Howes?

  If you needed to go all in.

• 50:58Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, if I need to go all in in the future, then I will, I won't have forgotten everything. I will still have kept my finger in it and then it becomes more of an option further down the line.

• 51:06Lewis Howes?

  How much, how much could you make full time if you were full time right now as a doctor?

• 51:10Ali Abdaal?

  Um, at my level, probably 40,000 a year, 50,000 a year, something like that.

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  50,000 a year, you make that in a month on Skillshare?

• 51:19Ali Abdaal?

  Yep.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  So you're doing something full time, you make 50,000 in a year, you'd make it in a month without doing anything?

• 51:29Ali Abdaal?

  That's a good point.

• 51:31Lewis Howes?

  50,000 max, that's all you could make?

• 51:34Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, at my current, so in the, in the UK, so 10, 10 years from now, I'd be making 120,

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 51:41Ali Abdaal?

  120,000, that's sort of the, the upper limit of, of doctors in the UK.

• 51:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay, in 10 years and you make that in one week with all your revenue streams?

• 51:49Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Lewis Howes?

  Ish. Right. So

• 51:53Ali Abdaal?

  This is pretty, yeah, you're right. This is pretty irrational.

• 51:55Lewis Howes?

  Wait a minute. So you make 200 bucks a month right now. And you could make, if you went all in, if you obsessed, if you gave your life to this mission, you can make 50 grand, maybe 55,000 in a year. If you went 60, 80 hours a week for the hopes in 10 years of making 120,000 dollars. Maybe.

• 52:15Ali Abdaal?

  Yes.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  And you would save seven people's lives.

• 52:20Ali Abdaal?

  Yes.

• 52:20Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to changing millions of people's lives through your content, which is the thing you love to do, which is teach. And you're holding on to it for the potential that maybe all these revenue streams run dry. And you won't be able to figure it out if one thing goes down. If you had all the energy and thought and skill that you've developed of your time, you wouldn't be able to figure out how to launch a new revenue stream.

• 52:42Ali Abdaal?

  Damn, you're right.

• 52:45Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. I just That's so true. I feel like this is turning into a therapy session, which is great because I've genuinely never really thought in this way before because in my mind, it was just, oh, oh, it's a, it's a good backup option. But you just like really listing it out like that.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  What would, what would happen?

• 52:59Ali Abdaal?

  Makes it seem completely absurd. Yeah.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  What would happen if you?

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  What do you, how many hours a week are you putting in as a doctor right now?

• 53:08Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, like four.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  Four hours. Okay. So you're putting in 10 to 12 hours a month.

• 53:15Ali Abdaal?

  Yep.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  So 120 hours a year or something. What if you completely eliminated that idea from your mind that you were letting go of that time? 10 hours a month, 12 hours a month. You weren't going to be thinking about it. You weren't have to show up somewhere and practice it. That you were just going to use that energy, that thought, that emotional uh, strength to develop the next program to make your channel even bigger, to go all in on hiring more people, to do these things to help you expand. If you want to and serve and teach more people on a broader scale as opposed to 10, 12 hours a month, I'm going to hold on to this thing. What type of impact do you think you'd be able to make? And in the last couple of years, you said you had no clue would get to 2 million subscribers on YouTube.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  If you had that extra time and thought, how much bigger do you think you'd get it in the next two years?

• 54:05Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think it would, to me, it feels, it feels less like a, you know, the, the, the physical time, the hours spent and more like the, the mental weight of that because I do.

• 54:15Lewis Howes?

  The mental and emotional weight, right?

• 54:17Ali Abdaal?

  I, I do genuinely think about this like almost every day. I think, oh, am I making the wrong decision by not going all in on medicine?

• 54:24Lewis Howes?

  So wait a minute, you think about this every day, there's for five, maybe five minutes, maybe 20 minutes, you think about this, you ruminate on this. How many minutes is that adding up and how much energy is that consuming that's holding you back, that's making you think as opposed to all that energy focused on building and creating something that you truly, truly love and want to do?

• 54:45Ali Abdaal?

  Good point. Quite a lot of energy spent on holding on to this thing because it's.

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  Thinking about it. It's like being, it's like being, I, I know this feeling because it's like being in a relationship for, for too long. And every day you think, should I be in this relationship or not? Is this the right person for me or not? Uh, I, well, I really love this person. I care about them and I don't want to hurt them. And could I find someone as good as them in the future? Ah, but they have this quality I really like. And maybe they could be a good mother and maybe they could be this. But is it really fueling your heart and your soul? And I know people watching or listening have had that experience in a previous relationship or maybe they're in one right now where they're having this everyday conversation. Should I stay in this? Should I not? If you're constantly questioning this, it's almost like you either need to go all in and say, I'm making the

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  decision to stay in this and I'm going to do this 12 hours a month thing to hold on for maybe 10 years, make a hundred grand if I lose all my money. Um, but it sounds like you've got the skills to be able to generate a, a revenue stream in a moment if you wanted to. If everything went away, could you make a hundred thousand dollars in a year if you needed to with your skills?

• 55:51Ali Abdaal?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 55:53Lewis Howes?

  Not being a doctor?

• 55:54Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 55:55Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So if every, if all your money went away, if all your business, if your YouTube shut down, if course Skillshare went out of business, there's all these things, could you figure out how to make money on a platform to make a hundred grand in a year?

• 56:09Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, maybe not year one, but definitely by year two. Yeah.

• 56:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So by year two, you could do this. I think you could do it in three months, personally. But by year two, you'd still be making double what you'd be making as a doctor full time by year two, if you had nothing.

• 56:27Ali Abdaal?

  That's a good point.

• 56:29Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, what's what's stopping me from letting go of that?

• 56:34Lewis Howes?

  I think the big thing is the prestige, the credibility, not just being a YouTuber. I'm hearing you say this over and over. And I'm I'm not trying to convince you one way or another. I'm just trying to shed light and reflect to you. What you're saying to me and what's possible for you. And I know as someone who's, if you're telling me I love to be a teacher. This is what I obsess of. This is what I really want to do, but you're doing something else where you're not doing it. Then part of your heart is held back. The energy is held back from you going all in on that. And I just know when people go all in on the thing they love, magical things start to happen. Maybe it doesn't happen right away, but magical things start to happen, not only impact wise, but financially. And I know that you'll financially start to really expand and evolve.

• 57:19Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's one of the things that for me, you know, I want to talk about mindset while we talk about this, the mindset of making more money.

• 57:29Lewis Howes?

  Uh, this is my belief. When you go all in on something and you truly believe in your heart that this is what you're meant to do. And you let go of something that you. You know, you're like, ah, but I don't want to lose this because what if it's, what if they're going to be a great partner in the future? What if they'll be a great parent? Well, they show these qualities that could they, maybe they could work out for me. As opposed to no going all in on the thing that you know you're meant to do. And the signs continue to show you, oh, you're good at making passive income. You've got nine revenue streams. You're good at YouTube. You just what? Grew a couple million in the last few years, like it's grown extremely fast. You're good at this. It's almost like, what if you obsessed and went all in on these things? What could you create? How much faster could you do these things? So for me, what is the

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  the mindset that you've developed in general to get to this place? That's helped you make more money. And did you always feel like you could make money as a kid? Did you always feel like money came naturally to you? Or did you feel like money was bad and wrong and you had to shift that at some point?

• 58:33Ali Abdaal?

  Hmm. Yeah, I think as a kid, the idea of making money.

• 58:41Ali Abdaal?

  It was.

• 58:43Ali Abdaal?

  It was more around like, oh, I could, you know, I can, I can upgrade my laptop if I have a bit more money. And I can supplement the money that I make from my birthdays and like, you know, that, that kind of thing by making money on the internet. Then over time, especially after I discovered the four hour work week, it was a case of, okay, you know, I think, I think, I think the way I think about it these days is that. And I'm, I'm kind of reflecting on this basement. We just said that. The, the way I think of money is that we, we all need to tick the box of making enough money to survive through some, something or another.

• 59:18Ali Abdaal?

  For most of us, that's through our day job. Through our day job, we make enough money to live off. And then we do our, the, the stuff we actually enjoy in the evenings and in the weekends. And for me, it was always a case of, okay, I never want to be in that position where I am. Shackled to a job that I might not necessarily enjoy. Just for the sake of that money, which is what, which, which, which was then the mindset that made me develop all these streams of income. And at every junction, thinking, okay, how do, how do I turn this into another income stream? How do, how do, how do, how do I, I, how do I do it that way? And the thing that actually sparked this, so before, before our work week was, was one of them, but then. Since I, I got into med school, every, every time I would meet another doctor, I would ask the question that, hey.

• 1:00:02Ali Abdaal?

  If you were to win the lottery, would you still do medicine?

• 1:00:05Lewis Howes?

  That's a great question. If you won a lottery, would you do a lot, uh, would you do medicine still?

• 1:00:10Ali Abdaal?

  Hmm. And so like in my, in my polling, casually polling every, basically every doctor I know, about half of them said, no, they would leave immediately. And the other half said, yes, they would still do it because it's fun, but they would do it part time. I eat not like 80 hours a week, but instead maybe like 30 hours a week or 40 hours a week to be able to spend more time with their kids or be able to kind of do things they, they cared about. And they made the point that, you know, working 80 hours a week is less good for the patients than. A doctor working 40 hours a week or 30 hours a week with more time and more energy to give.

• 1:00:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. More clarity, more thoughtfulness, more attention. Yeah.

• 1:00:42Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. And in that time, I don't, I don't think I've met, yeah, I've, I've not met anyone who has said they would continue to work in medicine full time if they didn't need the money. And that really set off an alarm bell in my mind being like, okay, cool. If 100% of doctors that I know would change what they're doing based on if we're, if they won the lottery, I want to get to the, like. Ideally, the kind of life I want for myself is the kind where if I did suddenly win the lottery or suddenly got an extra 10 million in the bank, it would not change anything about the way that I live. That would be like a dream kind of goal of mine to live the sort of life where the answer to that question is I would not change anything at all.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Would you keep practicing? Medicine?

• 1:01:23Ali Abdaal?

  No, I wouldn't.

• 1:01:25Lewis Howes?

  If you had 10 million in the bank, you'd stop?

• 1:01:28Ali Abdaal?

  If I had 10 million in the bank, I would stop practicing medicine. I would just do YouTube videos that I cared about. Uh, and I would teach things in real life. I would run three seminars.

• 1:01:38Lewis Howes?

  So you don't love it because?

• 1:01:39Ali Abdaal?

  I'd probably teach medical students. I do enjoy teaching medicine.

• 1:01:42Lewis Howes?

  Teach them. Do you want to be practicing?

• 1:01:44Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, no, I don't really want to be practicing.

• 1:01:46Lewis Howes?

  So that's why for me, when I launched my podcast, School of Greatness, I was like, I'm gonna do something that I love and not make money and I'm gonna show up and do it out of the love of it and of the mission for it. And eventually I do want to make money, but it wasn't the main intention. And I think it sounds like if you had more money, which you already have enough to quit and be fine for a few years. It sounds like you would quit, you would stop and you would go all in on this.

• 1:02:15Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think the, the problem that I have is very much an irrational internal thing is, is how the goalpost keeps on changing and, you know,

• 1:02:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:29Ali Abdaal?

  The, uh, we, uh, you know, our business is gonna do, I don't know, like 3 million revenue with like 80% profit margins this year. That is way beyond any reasonable person's point of I have enough money. And yet I still think, oh, but what if I get cancelled? What if I say something on a podcast? I need 10 million now. You know, I was speaking to a, um, a startup founder in the US who has a company valued at a billion dollars. And he was saying, well, he's got about 10 million in the bank, but he thinks 25 million is, is really where he's gonna feel comfortable. And I was just sort of laughing and then I realized, hang on, that's basically what I'm doing. Yeah, exactly the same thing.

• 1:03:04Lewis Howes?

  Someone who's just getting started on YouTube would be like, I'd love to make 3 million dollars this year on YouTube. I would quit everything if I made a million dollars. So, so what's your number then?

• 1:03:15Ali Abdaal?

  These days, 10 million is the number in my mind.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  How much do you need to bring in for you to say, oh, I'm gonna actually go all in on this?

• 1:03:26Ali Abdaal?

  I think it's less about a number and more about actually just being okay with it's like thinking like these questions that you've asked me have really like thrown me for one because I've never genuinely considered that. I think I'm I'm past the number where, you know, I think if I was being objective, if I had like a million in the bank, I would feel, okay, this will actually support me for 20 years. I can live with a 40,000 salary, 50,000 salary for 20 years. I'm pretty sure I could find a way to make money in 20 years with a million in the bank. And so, yeah, I'm way past that point already. I think it's it's the fear, it's the prestige, it's the status anxiety, it's that irrational stuff.

• 1:04:04Lewis Howes?

  It's a time investment, you've 80 years of your life investing in this skill and this, you know.

• 1:04:10Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, and I think it's also, I think it's also like an insecurity around, do I have value outside of my?

• 1:04:16Lewis Howes?

  If you're not a doctor.

• 1:04:17Ali Abdaal?

  If I'm not a doctor, exactly, like, do I have credibility? Can I really talk about productivity if I'm not saying, hey, when I was a doctor, I did X, Y, Z? How long can I really trade off of the fancy university I went to to talk about how to study for exams? That's the, I think that's the main concern.

• 1:04:34Lewis Howes?

  Who are your, who are the top YouTubers you really respect?

• 1:04:39Ali Abdaal?

  Peter McKinnon, Matt DiVella, Thomas Frank, you, Tim Ferriss, well, I wouldn't really call him a YouTuber.

• 1:04:47Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, all of these guys are full-time YouTubers.

• 1:04:50Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:04:51Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, none of them are doctors on the side.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they weren't, well, they also weren't like, I mean, Matt, he was, he was like a struggling film, film editor, right, that now talks about productivity and life hacking. He wasn't like some prestigious film school documentarian, you know, I don't know, who else did you mention? Peter was a photographer. Yeah, I mean, but you respect him as a content creator and what he's built for his life through the content creation and his art and his expression. I don't know, I think about Mr. Beast or something, maybe you respect him, it's like, he's just a kid who's brilliant and executes like a machine.

• 1:05:35Lewis Howes?

  He didn't have some college degree, I don't know, maybe he did, but he didn't have something he was like known for. It's like you become known for the thing that you're teaching as well, and the people that you can help and the results they get, you become known for the results that other people get. I wasn't, you know, I was a former athlete, why should people be listening to me? You know, it's like I didn't have some fancy degree. Took me seven years to finish college. It's not like I'm this, you know, wise expert to like, you know, learned all these things. I learned through like the school of hard knocks of just like suffering and going through pain and being like, I want the answers. Let me find the answers and then apply it and teach it and and share it. So I think the fact that you went after something,

• 1:06:18Lewis Howes?

  you built your career. Yeah. I mean, people are, do you think people are really respecting you as from your experience as a doctor? You don't teach them.

• 1:06:25Ali Abdaal?

  They're really not. Yeah. There's nothing to do with anything that I

• 1:06:28Lewis Howes?

  People, people value your advice, but they're not looking to you for the answers of like, teach me how to heal my, you know, whatever.

• 1:06:35Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Lewis Howes?

  Broken arm. They're not coming to you for the thing that you're doing. They're coming to you. They're not coming to you because you are a doctor or let me learn his productivity and passive income streams because he's a doctor. No, they're coming to you because you know how to do those things and you've applied them to become a doctor and everything else in your life. That's what they come for. And that's how you're helping people. You're not teaching medical advice, are you?

• 1:06:59Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, no, absolutely not. And even if I lost, even if I lost it all, uh, you know, the business died, YouTube channel died, everything died overnight, lost all the investments, lost all the money in the bank.

• 1:07:10Ali Abdaal?

  The sort of stuff I would teach would be entrepreneurship, coding, videography, the creator stuff. I would not venture into teaching medicine. Unless I was kind of doing it for fun for like friends of mine, that that kind of.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. If you're like.

• 1:07:23Ali Abdaal?

  It would not be my, yeah.

• 1:07:24Lewis Howes?

  Um, I have a, I have a cut here and you'd be like, okay, go do this and go get this medicine. Okay.

• 1:07:29Ali Abdaal?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 1:07:32Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna let you ruminate on this for a little bit and think about it. I'm gonna text you in like a week and see where you're at with this.

• 1:07:36Ali Abdaal?

  Message me. Yeah, this is so interesting. I've genuinely never thought about it, about it in this way before. I think you just laying it out in such clear language. It's made me realize how

• 1:07:45Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people This is I think, I think I can relate to this. A lot of people watching, listening can relate to this because We've all done this in some area of our life, whether it was I'm in a career that I don't really enjoy, or that I, maybe I hate, but I stay there because the benefits are because the credibility or the community I've built or whatever. But you know, it's not what you want to do, but you stay. There's a relationship that I've stayed in that people can feel like, yes, I've stayed in this for six months too long, six years too long. Thirty years too long when I knew it wasn't right, but Well, we had the kids and we had the family integration and we had the house together. So it just, it was a safety backup plan. It was

• 1:08:26Lewis Howes?

  Because it was too risky to go out there and have courage and go all in on something else, or be alone for a period of time and try to create something new. So we're, we feel safe with this. This is anything here. So I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just trying to reflect back to you and see what's possible.

• 1:08:42Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Lewis Howes?

  From a place of vision, not from a place of fear or, or a status anxiety. And

• 1:08:50Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:50Lewis Howes?

  How much, how much greater of an impact you could create by

• 1:08:56Lewis Howes?

  In a wise manner, making a decision either way. And giving your energy towards the thing that you think is going to help the most. So I'm going to connect you about this later, but I'm curious. A lot of your content revolves around being productive. Since we've talked about that, you're an expert in this. This is what people come to you for. They don't come to you for medical advice.

• 1:09:15Ali Abdaal?

  No.

• 1:09:15Lewis Howes?

  Um, it revolves around being productive. What would you say are the best tools to increasing productivity for someone that says, You know, I'm already overworked. I'm already overwhelmed. Um, I don't have the time to create a passive income stream. Or just improve like the health in my life. What are some of those Main tools that you use or you teach to help increase productivity for people?

• 1:09:39Ali Abdaal?

  Yes, I think the first step is to really get clear on what productivity means. And so I think a lot of people view productivity as just being efficiency. But to me, productivity is, efficiency is like part of it, but the other part of it is living intentionally. Am I, am I going in a direction that I want to go? So for example, you know, it's not very productive to drive at 100 miles per hour if you're going in the wrong direction. So really figuring out that direction. And also, to me, productivity is, am I, am I doing, am I like, basically, am I having fun along the way? Because the more fun, certainly for me, I found the more fun I have, the more productive I naturally am as a result.

• 1:10:19Ali Abdaal?

  And I think a lot of the advice around productivity basically talks about, it basically centers on how can you do more things if it sucks? It's like, okay, well, you have a to-do list, you have your this, you have your weekly reviews. But really, I think, again, optimizing for what's fun, optimizing for enjoyment, and either picking something that's already fun, or more likely, finding ways to enjoy the thing that you're already doing. That is the thing that really moves the needle for productivity. And then everything else, you know, the to-do lists, whether you use Notion or Todoist or Things or all these other apps, all these other hacks, these are just like very minor things that, very minor tweaks. But the thing that moves the needle, I found, is make it really easy to start and make it really fun to do.

• 1:11:03Ali Abdaal?

  So easy to start, meaning, essentially, this is the subject of the book that I'm writing. And I have to hand in the proposal today, so I've just been having all this stuff percolating in my head. I call it the three horsemen. And the three horsemen that like kill us when it comes to productivity is number one procrastination, number two, distraction, and number three, burnout.

• 1:11:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:24Ali Abdaal?

  Now, procrastination is really a problem with getting started. There's that inertia, like to start anything, it's like it takes a bit of effort, like. And so the way we can defeat the horsemen of procrastination is just make it super easy, the easiest thing possible. People say you should set ambitious goals, et cetera, et cetera, and make a change in the universe. That's all well and good, but if you're struggling with productivity and procrastination, you don't want an ambitious goal, you want a really, really, really easy goal. You know, I struggle with procrastination when I think I want to write a New York Times bestseller. I don't struggle with procrastination when I think instead, you know what? I just want to write one paragraph that I'm happy with today. That is how I make it easy to get started.

• 1:12:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think it's so true. When you think of the big daunting goal, and you're like, okay, I gotta get started on that. And I'm gonna do that right now. It seems like, but it's so big. How do I do that right now? But if you're like, you know what? This is a vision of mine and I want to create this. But what can I do where I just enjoy writing one page or enjoy writing an outline with a few bullet points? And that's what I'm gonna do today. Not try to do the whole thing in a day or a weekend, but I'm gonna do that one thing today. I like that approach.

• 1:12:27Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. And then progress made, made one step at a time. And so, yeah, that's sort of step number one. You overcome procrastination by just making it pretty easy by reducing all the friction, reducing all the, I call it environmental friction and emotional friction. Environmental friction in that. If I want to practice the guitar, I have my guitar over there because it's in, it's in sight and in reach. It's not in my closet just sitting there. And emotional friction is like, you know, the perfectionism, the fear, the self doubt, the guilt, the, I need to wait until I have a perfect camera setup before I make a YouTube video because otherwise, because you know, you know, otherwise people are gonna laugh at me or, I need to wait until I'm in better shape before I go to the gym because I don't want people to judge me while I'm at the gym. It's the emotional friction that is often a bigger source of procrastination than almost anything else.

• 1:13:11Ali Abdaal?

  And that's just, you know, as, as you know, it's a, a long-term battle to overcome that side of ourselves that's afraid and self doubting. Which is all the things that I'm currently doing when I think about this decision to leave medicine, interestingly.

• 1:13:25Ali Abdaal?

  So that's procrastination. The second one is distraction. And I think distraction only is only really a problem when we're not having fun. Like, no one gets distracted from watching Netflix. No one gets distracted from hanging out with their friends or playing board games. That's like my source of fun. But we get distracted from like, I don't know, working on a thing that's either hard or that we find boring.

• 1:13:44Ali Abdaal?

  And, you know, there's all, all sorts of techniques that we can use to get over that. One of the biggest ones is gamification. Actually find a way to turn it into a game, even if it's really dull, you know, like studying for med school exams. If you find a way to turn it into a game to incorporate a challenge and progress, like tracking your scores, color coding things. I would color code my revision timetables like red, orange, green, and I'd see the change to green over time and that would feel good. So even if I was not enjoying the thing, I would enjoy the gamification of the thing. And there's tons of evidence about how that really works to make things more fun. Bringing other people on board is another big one. You know, again, to use med school as an example, studying with friends is always more fun than studying alone. Building this business, you know, working with a team is more fun than working solo.

• 1:14:28Ali Abdaal?

  Anything we can do to incorporate more people into the thing that we're doing will automatically make it more fun. And therefore, as a side effect, will make us more productive. And I think what I've certainly learnt about productivity over the last few years of researching extensively is that I think productivity is kind of like a Trojan horse in that a lot of people want, and I certainly wanted productivity hacks and productivity tips and ways to be more efficient. But the deeper you go into it, the more you realise that it's not actually about that. It's actually more about, you know, the stuff that you talk about, living a life that's aligned with your values, living intentionally, living your your vision and what you find meaningful. And when you do that, then the productivity takes care of itself. Like you probably don't need productivity hacks.

• 1:15:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's not about getting more things done. It's about doing things you enjoy in a fun way. And doing those things consistently and enjoying the process. And if you're feeling like overwhelmed or procrastinating, you probably need to realign, like, what are the things that are these fun for me? And how can I make them more fun? How can I game fight? How can I add other people that I enjoy doing this with? It's like, how can I make chores like my favourite part of the day? Where it's like, it's not the thing that's the chore that I'm dragging my feet on cleaning the dishes or taking out the trash. It's like, no, I've actually trained myself to enjoy this process so much because we do it as a family. Because we turn on music and dance when we do it. Because that's when we reward ourselves, whatever it might be.

• 1:15:57Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's when we, you know, we gotta, we gotta train our brains differently around some of these things, you know?

• 1:16:03Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, absolutely. So I think those, for me, are like the things that actually move the needle for productivity, like make it easy and make it fun. And then everything else is just kind of fun to note out about like, oh, which app do you use? And, you know, what are the tricks? And I've got, I've got plenty of tricks, but really the tricks are not the thing that actually makes any difference to anyone's productivity. The tricks are in a way a distraction from what actually matters, which is.

• 1:16:24Lewis Howes?

  From productivity, yeah.

• 1:16:25Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, make it easy and make it fun.

• 1:16:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes, so make it easier, make it fun. You said distraction, you said procrastination, what was the third one?

• 1:16:33Ali Abdaal?

  The third one was burnout.

• 1:16:35Lewis Howes?

  Burnout.

• 1:16:36Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, so that's like, you know, if something is easy and something is fun, then, and I think this is something that I'm still, I'm still trying to figure out. I'm doing a lot of research around, around this topic where I will find myself working until like 11:00 PM midnight, just like doing business stuff or like reading a management book or working on a YouTube video because it's so fun that I'm just not taking care of myself. And I think from basically all of the evidence, like I have, I don't think I've yet experienced this personally myself. I probably have, maybe I'm just bullshitting myself, but you know, that's just a pathway to burnout. Like there is too much, you know, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, too much fun, too much productivity is bad, even if you're enjoying yourself.

• 1:17:16Ali Abdaal?

  And so that bit is just basically about taking breaks and, you know, one of the biggest tips that I found, I found really helpful for me is, I don't know if you, if you have that feeling where like, I often get it where I'd get to the end of a day and I'd always, I have this sense of dissatisfaction that, oh, I could have done more. You know, in between recording the podcast with Lewis and my friends coming over, I had a half an hour window. You know, I scroll Twitter in that time instead, I, I could have made progress on my book, what's wrong with me? And, you know, it's just, I'm choosing to just flagellate myself for no reason because I'm really unsatisfied with like what I've managed to do that day. And it's just completely stupid. And if I find, if I find myself doing that, I think, no, what the hell are you doing?

• 1:17:58Ali Abdaal?

  I've had a great day. Life is good. I'm having fun, enjoying the journey, business doing well, we're profitable, we're helping people, that's enough. I don't need to, I don't need to try and eke out every moment of efficiency and productivity in my day.

• 1:18:10Lewis Howes?

  Why do we, why do we as humans, why do we as humans tend to do that? I feel like that's a common theme as human beings, like, oh, I had this open window and I should have done, I should have done this. I should have done more of this. I should have created that. Why do we as humans tend to do that? Is that just kind of social pressure, you think, is that the way our culture has been built on being the most efficient and productive people we can be? Is that because we're always obsessed with wanting to buy more things or make more money? Why do you think we're wired that way as humans in general? Not everyone, but it seems like a lot.

• 1:18:43Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, this is an area I'm doing a lot of, a lot of reading around. I think, I think for me personally, it's fear-based, as we've kind of just talked about. It's if I don't keep on running at 120 miles per hour, someone will overtake me. And then that would be bad because then I will suddenly lose all my subscribers and all my revenue and all my income streams overnight. And it goes into a completely irrational loop of I need to constantly be on my A game and constantly be moving. Because similar to the stuff that, you know, that I believe that if you're, if you're not growing, you're dying. It's like, oh, okay, but I could be growing faster and I could be, I'm leaving money on the table and I could be building even more of a safety net.

• 1:19:25Ali Abdaal?

  Because in case I lose the job, I have 30 years' worth of savings rather than 20 years' worth of savings.

• 1:19:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:19:30Ali Abdaal?

  That's, that's probably what it is for me. Yeah, I haven't, I haven't yet done enough reading to figure out, to try and understand what it's like, what it's like for other people. Do you, do you have that feeling at all, that strike, or did you in the past?

• 1:19:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think I did in the past where I was, I was broke on my sister's couch for about a year and a half, trying to figure, you know? And I didn't have, I didn't think I had skills or tools to make money. And so I was like, okay, what am I going to do with my life? Luckily, my sister let me stay for a year and a half rent-free and I kind of ate all our food for free and I didn't, you know? While I was learning these things, when I, this was when I was like reading blogs, you know? Reading for our work week and trying to implement these things, studying other thought leaders and the content they were creating. This is when I was doing kind of like local networking events and started learning events. I was inventing a product and I remember in 2008, I was using Alibaba.com.

• 1:20:25Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, so I was like sent over this janky design to a few different people in China. And then I remember like all the money I had, I think it was like 160 bucks, it was like all the money I had. I wired it to some bank in China and I was like, hopefully they send me the prototype. And I think it was like four weeks later, I got like this box and it was like the most incredible, I was like, I got it. My idea is here, it arrived. And, um, you know, it's definitely needed more work and prototypes and this and this. And I continued down the path, but it was like, I didn't, I didn't have any money. And I remember every dollar mattered for that year and a half window, like every dollar was going towards food or was going towards like something to help me improve.

• 1:21:10Lewis Howes?

  And When, when I had that feeling, I can't speak for everyone else, but when I had that feeling and I started to make money, I did not want to go back to that place. I was saving everything. I, I was just like, I was, if I had to travel, I was in the middle backseat of the cheapest airline with as many connections. Or I took a Greyhound bus places, or I, I never paid for a hotel room. I remember it wasn't until like five, six years ago, when I actually like paid for my own hotel room. I was like, who do I know? Whose couch can I stay on? Yeah. Who's got an extra bed? I'll sleep on the floor to save this extra hundred fifty dollars for a hotel room. It didn't make sense for me to spend money on a, I was like, why spend money on a bed?

• 1:21:51Lewis Howes?

  At a hotel when I can use that money for something else and just try to meet people and crash. I remember I was literally kicked out of a hostel that I was paying like, I don't know, eight dollars for a night in Philadelphia. They, it was like twenty bunk beds in one room and they somehow double booked my bunk bed or whatever. And they had to kick me out that night. And I remember walking the streets of Philadelphia with my suitcase. I was waiting to go back on the Greyhound bus to get back to Ohio. Uh, later the next day and I was like, I'm either gonna sleep in the sidewalk, on a bench in a city that I'm not familiar with. Or I gotta meet someone and go find a place to crash. I went into a bar, I kid you not, I went into a bar, I don't drink alcohol, but I went into a bar.

• 1:22:36Lewis Howes?

  And I started having conversation with this group of people, telling them what I'm up to, just like building a rapport. And within thirty minutes, they were like, oh, why don't you come crash on our futon, stay the night. I literally stayed in some stranger's futon. Got up in the morning, left, went to the bus station and then drove back. And uh, it was just about how can I be as resourceful as possible because I was afraid to go back to a place of being broke. And for years I was afraid of that. Probably wasn't until about four years ago, I was like, okay. I can, I know I can make money again if I lose it all, like it's gonna be okay. So I understand your position. But I also wasn't as far along as you are, you know, within the first few years of getting started, uh, you know,

• 1:23:20Lewis Howes?

  uh, of the YouTube growth and everything else. So you're much farther along financially than I was in those first couple of years.

• 1:23:28Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, lots to ruminate about after this call. I appreciate you pushing me on this. This is like really, really useful.

• 1:23:36Lewis Howes?

  Of course. What um, so we got these three areas of procrastination, distraction and burnout. What do you think is the area that is the most difficult for people to overcome?

• 1:23:51Ali Abdaal?

  Hmm, I think it depends on what stage of the journey you're at. I think if, so if I do a quick back of my head poll of every message I've ever had about this, procrastination is the biggest one.

• 1:24:06Lewis Howes?

  Why do people procrastinate so much? What is the main cause of procrastination?

• 1:24:10Ali Abdaal?

  Ah, yeah, so um, one, one theory about this, which, which I agree with is, okay. Basically, I think, I think it's in two parts. Number one, there's this, in concept of, in psychology called exponential discounting. Basically, if I offered you a hundred dollars now, or a hundred dollars in a year's time, you would, you would definitely take the hundred dollars now. Even if I offered you one hundred and ten dollars in a year's time, you would still prefer the hundred dollars right now because we prefer short term gains over long term gains. But if I offered you like a million dollars in a year's time, you'd be like, all right, I'm gonna delay my gratification right now and get the million dollars in a year's time. And if you, if you ask enough people this question, you, you get this like exponential like curve over time,

• 1:24:54Ali Abdaal?

  where this is how much, how much we care about our future selves compared to our current selves. And so usually when we procrastinate, it's because we have to do something right now, which is somewhat unpleasant for the sake of a very long term gain. Like, I don't want to do my ab workout right now. There's 12 minutes of pain for the sake of, oh, you know, better health 12 months from now, a year from now, 20 years from now. It, it's, it starts to, it's like genuinely really, really, really hard to motivate ourselves to suffer in the short term for the sake of, of the long term. I think that's one like completely rational reason why people procrastinate, because you just can't be bothered to do the thing that's gonna have long term results. But I think also procrastination often is like putting things off, oh, I could do this tomorrow. And it's weird because like.

• 1:25:39Ali Abdaal?

  Again, there's a bunch of evidence in psychology about this, how what we think of our future selves is like a very idealized version of our future self. Like, right now, I'm thinking, you know what, after this episode, I've got some friends coming along. I really want to get like a burger. I haven't had a burger in a while. But I'm thinking, you know, tomorrow, I'm gonna have a salad instead. Yeah, my my future self tomorrow will will want to get what we'll want to have a salad. So our future self is like an idealized version. And so we think, oh, you know, I don't have the energy to do this right now. But six weeks from now, or tomorrow, my future self will. And this is why, you know, I find myself, you know, if

• 1:26:15Lewis Howes?

  And then we always procrastinate because we never do it.

• 1:26:17Ali Abdaal?

  Exactly, exactly. And like, if if someone emails me asking me to give a talk at something that I don't really care about, but it's two months from now, I think, oh, look at my calendar. It's so free two months from now. I mean, yeah, of course, of course, I say yes to that. And then I always regret it when it comes to two months from now. Because I don't, yeah, we just don't realize that who we are right now is who we will who exactly who we'll be tomorrow with exactly the same energy levels and exactly the same thought processes.

• 1:26:42Lewis Howes?

  Same mindset, yes.

• 1:26:42Ali Abdaal?

  Same mindset. I think those two things, the exponential discounting over time, and also the fact that we consider our future selves to be an idealistic version of ourselves, that is just bad and leads to procrastination, especially if we're procrastinating from something that's hard, that's not clearly defined, and that we think is going to be unpleasant. And so we make it easier, we make it more clearly defined, and we make it more fun. And again, all those things help with procrastination as well.

• 1:27:07Lewis Howes?

  Make it easier, make it more clearly defined, and make it fun. If you do those three things, it'll help you procrastinate less, or hopefully help you eliminate procrastination. Okay.

• 1:27:20Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, so procrastination is probably the biggest problem. I think distraction is the second biggest. And to be honest, burnout is only really a problem for the people who are so productive that they need to worry about burnouts. I think so. That's I get very few questions from people saying, I'm so productive to the point that I just love working so much that I get burned out. Usually, actually, people get burned out if they're working on something they're not passionate about. Exactly, yeah.

• 1:27:44Lewis Howes?

  It's about redirecting your energy towards things you're fun. Because if something's fun, you never want to stop the game. Like, you stop the game because you're like, I don't know, it's 3am in the morning, we got to sleep at some point, so let's go to bed. And then you dream about playing again, and you're like, let's do it again tomorrow. So if you can create your life around that is like, this is a fun game and I enjoy this, you're not gonna feel burnout. You might need like a break every now and then like, okay, let me take a week off and like, just go, I don't know, on a lake or go on a vacation somewhere and just like water skiers. I don't know, something where you can just clear your mind. But then you can get back to the game. And if you can design your life that way, that's a pretty cool experience. That's a pretty cool journey that you get to live.

• 1:28:27Lewis Howes?

  So burnout is just like you're, you're working on things you don't enjoy. Um, because you've enjoyed it, you'd wanna spend more time on it. You'd obsess about it. You'd be thinking about it all day, all night. You'd dream about it. Um, so burnout's that, got you. So distraction is something that's massive for so many people because obviously because of social media and because of just, you know, whatever games that people wanna play that are more fun than the activity they wanna do. Um, how do people eliminate distraction when it's just, they're constantly on their phone. It's like, do you have to put your phone in a lock, a safe somewhere in order to do that? Or there are other ways you can do that? Or is it, again, making it smaller bite-sized items that you can tackle every day, not trying to spend eight hours doing one thing, but really saying, okay, for the next 50 minutes, I'm gonna do this.

• 1:29:12Lewis Howes?

  And then I'm gonna be okay with what I completed. And allow yourself time to be distracted on Twitter for 30 minutes, like you said, like, how do we do this?

• 1:29:20Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I think it's really all of the above. Um, there's, there is one school of thought that says basically the solution to distraction is to throw away your phone. If you lock your phone away, turn off Netflix, do not disturb, set some kind of app on your Mac that blocks all websites, then you will not get distracted. Um, I'm not, I mean, yeah, that works. I'm, I'm not a huge, I'm not a huge fan of that approach. I think the way I, I approach distraction, again, it, it just comes back to, down to make it fun. Like, how do I make this thing so fun to do? That I would rather do the thing than watch Netflix. I would rather do the thing than check notifications. And I still do, you know, I still have my phone face down and on do not disturb mode if I really wanna get work done because

• 1:30:00Ali Abdaal?

  even if something is fun, there's still that, that notification that can pull us away from it and that can look sort of attention switch and then that's generally bad for us. Um, but again, I think with distraction for me, the, the needle is moved by making it fun. Um, and the way that I'm, I'm kinda describing this in the book is a five-part framework that spells G A M E S, games. So it's like fun and games. Uh, gamification, autonomy, mastery, environment and social. Gamification, we've talked about. Turn it into a point system. The two elements of gamification are challenge and progress. So, you know, I used to be addicted to World of Warcraft, where you're just like grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding. But it's challenging and I see the progress. I see the XP bar filling up. I see myself leveling up. That's really addictive.

• 1:30:44Ali Abdaal?

  The more we can fake those things and hack those things into the stuff that we're doing, the more fun it's going to be, the less distracted we're going to be, crucially. And, you know, people often, often talk about, or, or, yeah, okay. Occasionally you'll hear parents complaining that, oh, their kids are super distractible. Or this is, you know, my kid is so ADHD, like not in the clinical setting, but just generally that they're just so distractible. I can never get them to sit still and do stuff. And then those same kids are waking up at three o'clock in the morning to log on to Minecraft to like play with their friends. Like, you know, these kids are not suffering from distraction problems. They're suffering from a problem with work that's really fricking boring to the point they're getting distracted from it. And so like learning from video game designers, who I think are the world experts on human psychology.

• 1:31:27Ali Abdaal?

  What are the things that go into video games that make stuff more fun? And how, like, if we have to, how can we put that more into the, into the stuff that we're doing? So that's the G. A for autonomy. Like autonomy is one of the core drivers of human, human motivation. Daniel Pink writes about this in the book Drive, which is very good. Basically, when we feel we have ownership of something, when we feel we, yeah, we're, we're in control, that makes everything more fun. And the, the sort of the practical hack that I use for this, I got from Seth Godin, which is just a subtle mindset shift. And I remember there was, there was a moment when, you know, it was, it was about, it was about this time last year, actually. I was, I was working as a doctor. It was full blown pandemic, all that, all that jazz. I'd gone to the end of a 13 hour long shift.

• 1:32:11Ali Abdaal?

  And the nurse said to me, hey, Ali, you know, this patient needs an IV. Can you put a cannula so we can give them fluids overnight? And I was like, oh no, my heart sank. I was like, shit. I was just about to go home and now this patient needs, needs fluids. And if the nurse wasn't able to put the IV, it must be really hard. So it's going to take me half an hour to do it. And while I was gonna getting the supplies, thinking, oh, you know, woe is me for having to do this. I heard someone in the next bay, one of the patients, talking to one of their relatives about how, how much of a privilege it was to be in the hospital and how much they loved the NHS, the National Health Service. And I, I realized at that moment that I, I wasn't being a good ambassador. At least like internally, I think I would have, I would have put on an act externally, but internally I was feeling resentment.

• 1:32:53Ali Abdaal?

  And I remember the blog post that I came across from Seth Godin, which is that if we're finding ourselves not enjoying stuff, we just need to change our mindset from I have to, to I get to. And immediately I was like, okay, I get to put in this IV. I get to make a difference in this person's life. I get to have the privilege of, you know, helping them in their hour of need, giving them fluids overnight. So their baby's going to be fine. They're going to be over fine. I was working on obstetrics at the time. And it just immediately made the thing more fun. And I think that spoke to this core driver of autonomy, that when I felt it was the nurse telling me I had to do this and it's part of my job and I have to, it's not fun. But when it's like, oh, I get to do this. I have gratitude. It's immense privilege. It just becomes more fun automatically.

• 1:33:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a friend of mine, a friend of mine, I think that's a great example and something I learned about nine years ago, eight years ago. A friend and coach of mine, Chris Lee, who's been on my show many times. He teaches the process from gaining perspective of when we say, I have to do something. How does it make us feel, uh, you know, we might feel resentment, we might be dragging our feet when we, we come from a, uh, the language and mindset of I have to, as opposed to when you said, I get to. It's more of like, I get to do this because people are, people would love to have my job. I get to do this because it gives me, you know, I get to help someone else. I get to this because it brings me a paycheck that provides for my lifestyle. I get to do this because it offers so much more. He takes it a third step farther.

• 1:34:17Lewis Howes?

  He says, where he has you go from I have to, I get to, and then I'm blessed to. I'm blessed to do this. I'm blessed to do this because, because.

• 1:34:28Lewis Howes?

  You know, my life has meaning and purpose, and this is an important task right now that could save someone's life. I'm blessed to do this because I've been trained as a doctor for eight plus years. And people rely on me and and this is a beautiful gift that I get to give into the world. I'm blessed to do this because I have, you know, security here and I and I can go home and feel good at night about my role, my task here in society. I'm blessed to, I'm blessed to, I'm blessed to. And we come from I'm blessed to because and we find the meaning behind the because. Then it shifts our mindset, it shifts our energy around our day to day tasks. Uh, even if we're maybe like, ah, do I want to be here? Yes, I'm blessed to be here because

• 1:35:10Lewis Howes?

  that perspective of gratitude that you said is is huge. And there are so many people in the world that have everything that don't feel blessed to have it. And that negative mindset makes them feel resentful and angry when everyone else could be like, but you have so much. Why don't you just shift your perspective and have gratitude for it? And then there are others who have very little, who have nothing, but they're blessed to have health, they're blessed to have peace, they're blessed to have their family and one meal a day. And they come from a attitude of gratitude of blessed to because they find the meaning behind it. And they live a very rich life. And I think that's a, that's something we can all practice. And when we practice this, we have a much more peace in our hearts. So.

• 1:35:55Lewis Howes?

  Uh, I love that you shared that. And I think that's Seth was was right about that as well. Um, so was this A?

• 1:36:02Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, so gamification autonomy. Uh, M stands for mastery. Again, mastery is another one of the core drivers of of human motivation. When we do something that we think that we feel we're good at, and when we feel we're getting better at the thing. That like whatever the thing is, it just makes it more fun, even if it's washing dishes. If you feel like you're the world expert on washing dishes. And you understand more about it than anyone else, you understand how the, I don't know, the. The surfactant works or whatever. Or how to do it faster or whatever. Yeah, it just makes it more fun. And so, again, like, just thinking about what are the ways in which, again, again, like, a lot of it just comes down to mindset. You know, even if you're, this is really good, this really good story that I came across, I think it was in some study about a

• 1:36:48Ali Abdaal?

  truck driver who was doing like deliveries for FedEx or something. And the way he would approach it, the way he would make it fun is that he just made it his mission that the boxes were going to fit like a Tetris grid. Like, it was gonna be so in line that it was just gonna, he was gonna be the master at that. And they talked about how he found his job so much more fun than the other FedEx drivers because, you know, he's became, he essentially talked himself into becoming a master of this one very niche, specific craft. But that tapped into our human desire, the motivational drive for mastery. So that's a big one. And then E and S are environment and social. So environment is basically how do we make our environment a bit nicer so that it's a bit more pleasant to do the thing?

• 1:37:32Ali Abdaal?

  Like, like you mentioned earlier, washing the dishes with music in the background is more fun than washing the dishes in pure silence. Adding music, there's some evidence that having greenery on your desk improves creativity and focus, which is why I always have a fake hickie up on a plant. Having a nice desk, it's just more fun working at a slightly nicer desk or at a coffee shop that we like the vibe of or at a library that we enjoy than it is not doing that. So those are just very, very simple tweaks we can make to our environment and just recognizing that the environment we're in has such a big impact on how much we enjoy the job.

• 1:38:04Ali Abdaal?

  And finally, there's S for social. So whatever we can do to incorporate people into the things that we're doing. So true. Working with friends, coworking sessions, even like Zoom, like these days I'm struggling with writing the book, but I joined this writer's hour, which is like 200 people on a Zoom call just writing. It just makes it more fun. And again, it just takes, takes advantage of the fact that we have this desire for social connection and we can use that to make whatever we're doing more fun. And all of this game stuff, G A M E S, gamification, autonomy, mastery, environment and social. If we can tick those boxes and if we can pull these levers, we'll make something, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying that everything can just be pure fun all the time. And I'm saying everything can be more fun than we're currently making it. And these are the five kind of evidence-based ways of sprinkling a bit more joy into whatever we're doing so that we're less likely to get distracted.

• 1:38:50Ali Abdaal?

  And you can do that alongside turning off your phone and putting on aeroplane mode and, and all that fun stuff.

• 1:38:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh yeah, smart. Yeah, I think you've simplified it for us, which is smart. And what are some time management skills that you wish you would have learned earlier or knew earlier in your life?

• 1:39:04Ali Abdaal?

  All right. I think there are two that are game changing. Number one is the daily highlights. Basically, every day, what is the one thing I actually want to get done today?

• 1:39:13Lewis Howes?

  In the morning, doing this, or is this the night before?

• 1:39:16Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, so I do it in the morning. If I were really pro, I'd do it the night before, but I'm kind of lazy, so I just do it in the morning. I also only do it about 50% of the time, but every time I do it, I'm always glad I did it and I am striving to do it every day.

• 1:39:28Lewis Howes?

  So what does that look like? What does that look like for you when you do it?

• 1:39:31Ali Abdaal?

  Uh, do I have, I'm actually like about to release a line of merch, like a productivity planner. But basically it's a to do list that says my most important task, the one thing I'd like to do today is in the morning. Uh, and so for me, depending if I'm trying out a new app, I'll just have, I'll put a little star emoji by it. If I'm using pen and paper, I'll just write it at the top and circle it.

• 1:39:52Lewis Howes?

  The one thing, so one thing you want to accomplish today, and if you accomplish that one thing and that's all you do, then it's a successful day.

• 1:39:58Ali Abdaal?

  Exactly. Yeah. What is the one thing where if this was the only thing I did today, it would be a win?

• 1:40:02Lewis Howes?

  And what's an example of the last couple of things you wrote down? Is it like write one page in my book? Is it doing, uh, you know, create a new YouTube video today? Is it, what are those things kind of typically?

• 1:40:12Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah. So for me today, it's doing this podcast with you, this, this interview with you. If this was the only thing I got done today, it would be a successful day because I get to meet you and it's fun and all that, all that jazz. Yesterday was, uh, completing the chapter outlines for my book proposal, which is due today, which I didn't manage to do, but I made more progress on them than I would have done had I not had that as my daily highlights. So it's just things like that. It's, it's really asking, what is the single thing that will actually make a difference in my life today? And sometimes that can actually be, you know what? The thing I want to do today is call my grandma or spend more time with a friend. I think I just asking that question. Because I don't really, I don't really like to do lists. I think of my to do list as a my to do list instead. I don't like feeling a slave to my to do list.

• 1:40:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:40:55Ali Abdaal?

  So I just think I will be a slave to that one thing, just that, that one daily highlight.

• 1:41:01Ali Abdaal?

  So that's technique number one and technique, technique, technique number two, which is related.

• 1:41:04Lewis Howes?

  I feel like, I feel like, before you get into that, I feel like you could, you could switch your language there as opposed to saying, I'm going to be a slave to this one thing today.

• 1:41:12Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:13Lewis Howes?

  I'm going to be of service to this one thing. And I think if you said, I'm going to be of service to, yeah, whatever that thing is. There's a deeper meaning and a deeper vision behind that. And when you come from a service based, it doesn't feel like I'm slaving to do this work and grudging along and I'm exhausting myself. It's, I'm being of service for a greater mission in my life. I'm here to serve someone else. I'm here to serve myself in a greater way for a higher purpose, for a higher cause, a higher vision, for my business, my family, my life, my health. And I think when you change the language, again, from my have to, to I get to, to I'm blessed to, to this is the thing I'm going to be a slave of, even though you were kind of tugging cheek about it, obviously, but just the language we use.

• 1:41:56Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:41:57Lewis Howes?

  You know, really dictates the way we feel about things and how we communicate about things, you know, makes us reflect on how we feel. So change it to, this is the one thing I'm going to be of service to today. And if I do that, it was a great day. Something to consider.

• 1:42:11Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, I love that. That's, that's really, really good. Yeah. I, I mean, I, I do use the phrase tongue in cheek, but I think I, even though it's tongue in cheek, I still.

• 1:42:19Lewis Howes?

  Still, you still say it.

• 1:42:19Ali Abdaal?

  I still, I still say it like, oh, I'm a slave to my calendar. Oh, I've got, I've got these Zoom calls back to back. I.

• 1:42:26Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I.

• 1:42:26Lewis Howes?

  Every, every, you know, there's a psychological.

• 1:42:28Ali Abdaal?

  I mean, around that, yeah.

• 1:42:29Lewis Howes?

  There's psychological things around, any word you say after I am. I am not enough. I am not good looking. I am not feeling good. I am sick. I am this. Like the words you use after I am really start to resonate with your body and resonate with your mind. And so when you start to say, I am whatever joyful, I am passionate, I'm excited about this. I'm excited to learn something. I'm, I'm, I'm of service to this thing. It starts to shift attitude and energy for the rest of the day.

• 1:43:01Lewis Howes?

  Something to think about.

• 1:43:03Ali Abdaal?

  I suppose that's why affirmations work. I've never really tried them properly, but I've spoken to so many people who just love the daily affirmation thing. Is that something that you do at all?

• 1:43:11Lewis Howes?

  I used to do that when I didn't feel good about myself. Now I feel good about myself pretty consistently. It's hard to kind of get me off track. I think because I've just been practicing it so much for so long now. Even when I'm not feeling good about myself, I know how to get back to like a baseline where I can manage things well enough and feel okay. But or I'm in the process of like, okay, if I'm not feeling good, how can I find who's the coach who can support me navigate this process? How can I, what exercise or what type of journaling prompt do I need to do to self-reflect? So I can learn from this and improve and move through it as opposed to stay stuck in this negative feeling.

• 1:43:54Lewis Howes?

  I still feel these, you know, challenges in my life. But I understand the value of coaching, of community support, of accountability, of self-reflection, of, you know, letting go of my ego, of feeling like I have all the answers and having a beginner's mind around these things. So that's what's worked for me.

• 1:44:16Ali Abdaal?

  Awesome. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

• 1:44:18Lewis Howes?

  So that was one thing. I think I interrupted you on the second thing you were to say around time management skills.

• 1:44:23Ali Abdaal?

  Oh yeah, the second one. Like, yeah, so these are the only two productivity hacks I actually use, the daily highlight and time blocking. Once I decide what that thing is, I stick it in my calendar and then generally when the time comes around, I'm like, oh, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do it because it's in the calendar. And if I can, if I can attach accountability to it, like do it with a friend or do it on a Zoom call with someone. Or even if I really have to, putting money on the line and telling my brother, look, if I don't do this thing that I'm really struggling with, you know, I'm going to pay you fifty, fifty pounds. At that point, if I really have to, I'll start using tricks like that. But generally, if it's important to me, if it's in the calendar, it'll it'll get done.

• 1:45:01Lewis Howes?

  This is the thing, what, you know, I'm I'm led by my vision and I my actions are based on my calendar. If it's not in the calendar, it's always going to be pushed to the next day, the next week. If you're like, I know I need to do this thing and I'm going to get around to it. You're not going to get around to it unless it means scheduling, cleaning your place or organizing your closet. Don't just say I'm going to get around to it when I have free time. Schedule the free time you have now to make it something you want to do so it's complete. And I think that has helped me by having a schedule. And, you know, obviously, some days, maybe I don't do anything on this calendar because I'm like, whatever, I'm having an off day and that's fine, too. But eighty, ninety percent of my calendar that's scheduled happens.

• 1:45:45Lewis Howes?

  And it's amazing what you can create in a month, you know, six months, a year, years, by being led by a vision, a purpose, and then intentional actions in your calendar to support that vision.

• 1:45:58Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, completely agree. I feel like I am I am currently not as vision and purpose led as I would like to be. I'm sort of slowly dabbling with this stuff and realizing every time I do like a guided meditation about vision. Like, it's actually really helpful. Do you do you have any exercises or things, prompts that you find helpful to think about vision and purpose and that kind of stuff?

• 1:46:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I have a I have an exercise called the Perfect Day Exercise. People, you know, they download it for free on my site, lewishouse.com. I'll send you it if you want it, but it's essentially kind of like a self-guided visualization process where on one piece of paper or multiple pages, you can just use one piece of paper. You sit, you can put some, you know, soft music on or or you can just sit in silence and really eliminate distractions. And you imagine and you visualize your perfect day, what that would look like. From specific details, from the moment you wake up, where are you? What does the sheets feel like? What does the pillow feel like? What is, is there someone next to you? Who is that person?

• 1:47:03Lewis Howes?

  Are they smiling at you? Are they hugging you and kissing you? Are you full of emotion of gratitude because of this relationship you have? Are there children in your life, you know? What is the imagery of the perfect ideal day look like? Knowing that every day is going to be different, but if you could have the perfect day, what would that generally look like? What are you doing in the morning? What location in the world are you? What is your view like when you open up the windows and the curtains? What do you see? Where are you making a cup of coffee? Are you making tea? Are you having a conversation with someone? Are you spending alone time and, and working out or doing something you enjoy? Are you writing? What does the rest of your afternoon look like? What does your evening look like?

• 1:47:48Lewis Howes?

  How do you fall asleep? And write it in detail. And then when you're done writing this imagery of what you would like to create, you create on the other side of the page or whatever, another blank page, you write down the schedule and you write down your calendar. And you say, okay, what is, what time do I wake up then? In this ideal perfect day, do I wake up at 6:00 AM, 8:00 AM, 9:00 AM? When do I wake up? And then every 10 to 30 minutes, you're scheduling in your perfect day. Kind of like, how would this look in the calendar? With the time that I have, how would this fit in?

• 1:48:25Lewis Howes?

  And now you have, okay, I've got a visioning process. I've got an integration and practical process. Now, how do I go live this? And how do I try to relive this, you know, as often as possible? And obviously it's going to evolve and change and grow and, and all these things over time. But coming from that place of like, what is the ideal day? What's the perfect day?

• 1:48:45Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:45Lewis Howes?

  And try to live that. So that's, that's the process that I have.

• 1:48:48Ali Abdaal?

  Love it. That's really good. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try that. I will, I will download it from your website.

• 1:48:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:48:53Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, that'll be good.

• 1:48:54Lewis Howes?

  Um, I'm curious. I got a couple of final questions for you. How do you go about setting and achieving your own personal goals? If you've got an idea, how do you set it as a goal? And then do you give yourself a timeline? Do you start creating time in your calendar and you're scheduling it for a certain timeline? Does it need to be done by a certain time? What is the process for you for setting and achieving goals?

• 1:49:18Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, I wish, I wish I had a better, a better system for this. I think right now, the only thing I focus on is, okay, I've got this as a goal. Let me now forget about this as a goal and focus on how can I make it as, as easy, easy to start and fun to do as possible?

• 1:49:36Ali Abdaal?

  Often for the goals that, you know, I, I, I've got a, I've got a general goal that I wanna, I wanna be more fit, wanna be more healthy. Sort of maybe wanna go for six pack abs, but that's a very much maybe because it's very like extrinsic, et cetera, et cetera. But I find a, a question I ask myself is, um, oh yeah, so I have, I have this template on my annual review thing when I actually set goals. Once a year, I should, I should do it more often, which is like, um, what, what is the thing I want to accomplish? And then, and by what date crucially? And then how surprised would I be on a scale of zero to 10 if I didn't do the thing? And then I ask, what are the top three reasons why I might not do the thing?

• 1:50:19Ali Abdaal?

  And then I ask, what are, what are three ways in which I can like mitigate those top three reasons? And then I say, who or what can help me? And usually when I ask myself that question, I realize, oh, I should get a coach for this thing. So ever since I got a personal trainer about, I don't know, eight months ago, my, I've, I've never been in better, in, in better shape. And it's, you know, still a work in progress, but I'd been trying to hit the gym for about eight years before then and never made any progress. But as soon as I decided, you know what, let me get someone, let me get, let's get a coach, let's get, let's get some accountability. That's been, that's been really useful. And so this year I, I, I had it as one of my goals to learn to become a concept artist. So to be able to illustrate scenes from fantasy fiction books. Anderson, incredible. And so I got an art teacher. I posted on Instagram being like, hey, I want to, anyone know this stuff.

• 1:51:05Ali Abdaal?

  And I had art lessons three times a week for a few months. And then eventually, like, you know, after I'd gotten to a certain standard at it, I realized that actually, right now, it's no longer a priority and the goal changed. And I didn't feel bad about it. I was like, cool, let's cancel that goal. You know, thanks to the art teacher. And now he's actually part of my team doing illustrations for some of our videos, which is cool.

• 1:51:26Ali Abdaal?

  Another kind of sort of semi tongue in cheek joke that I have is a goal to get married at some point in the next few years. And so I was really thinking like, how do I, how do I approach this a bit more systematically? Like, what does, what does that actually look like? And I decided, once the pandemic situation sorts itself out, you know, going on two dates a week would be like my goal. And then, you know, one of the reasons I might not do it, oh, well, because I would feel like I'm too busy. How can I mitigate against the risk of that? Well, I can block time in my calendar, which is only going to be for date night. Maybe a Saturday morning and a Thursday evening. That's what I decided. I can like, put money on the line with my brother and say, look, I have to go on these dates. I can like optimize my dating profile. I can send it to female friends for confirmation. Like, there's all these things that I could do

• 1:52:12Ali Abdaal?

  to work towards that goal. And when I started thinking in those ways, it genuinely helped, helped me make progress on this stuff because I think especially with the whole like relationship stuff, it's a bit, it's a bit like unfashionable to view relationships as being any kind of quantitative goal directed thing. But I thought, you know what? Screw it. Let's apply the principles of goal setting and motivation and stuff to this thing. And, you know, I've, I've not been on two dates a week since then, but I've been more intentional about my dating life than I've ever been in the past, purely because I set it as a goal and asked myself these questions. Yeah, that's how I approach it. It's very vague and ad hoc, but it sort of works.

• 1:52:47Lewis Howes?

  I think it's great strategies. Yeah, I think it's beautiful.

• 1:52:51Lewis Howes?

  This has been a great conversation. I've got a couple of final questions for you, Ali, and. I want people to, before I ask them, I want people to follow you and subscribe to you over on YouTube and Instagram. And you've got a book coming out later in the year, right? And where can we?

• 1:53:05Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, two years from now.

• 1:53:06Lewis Howes?

  Two years from now, okay.

• 1:53:07Ali Abdaal?

  Twenty twenty-three, yeah.

• 1:53:09Lewis Howes?

  Where can we go? What's the best website for you to say subscribed and to learn more about all the things you're up to and connect with you?

• 1:53:16Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, so my website, aliabdaal.com, there's a newsletter there. I send out an email every Sunday that just has a few thoughts and some links to interesting articles I've read.

• 1:53:26Ali Abdaal?

  So that'll be where all of my, all of my stuff will get circulated. But otherwise, yeah, just check out the YouTube channel and.

• 1:53:32Lewis Howes?

  YouTube channel, if they want to check out your courses, they can go to Skillshare and check those out and all that good stuff. I love it, man. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of the interview called the three truths. And imagine it's a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on this earth and you've accomplished every goal and dream that you've ever wanted. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your content with you to the next place or it leaves this place. And so no one has access to any of your content, your videos, this interview, your books, your work. None of it, they don't have access to it anymore. But you get to write down on a piece of paper, three things you know to be true or three lessons from your life that you'd want to leave behind. What would you say would be those three truths for you?

• 1:54:15Ali Abdaal?

  Oh, that's good. Okay.

• 1:54:19Ali Abdaal?

  Truth number one would be

• 1:54:23Ali Abdaal?

  a journey before destination.

• 1:54:29Ali Abdaal?

  Truth number two would be

• 1:54:33Ali Abdaal?

  when you're having fun, productivity takes care of itself.

• 1:54:39Ali Abdaal?

  And truth number three

• 1:54:43Ali Abdaal?

  would be

• 1:54:47Ali Abdaal?

  something like. Always ask why.

• 1:54:50Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:54:52Ali Abdaal?

  I yeah, I hesitated on that one a bit like going back to this conversation about medicine stuff. Well, like, why, why am I a doctor? Yeah, I need to, I need to get better at taking my own advice.

• 1:55:03Lewis Howes?

  I hear you, man.

• 1:55:04Ali Abdaal?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:05Lewis Howes?

  Those are good. Those are good. I'm gonna check in on you in a week and I'm gonna check in on you in a month and see if you made a decision. Either way, I want you to make a decision. You know what? I'm gonna be a doctor for the next year at least, and I'm gonna go all in at this 10 to 12 hour part time thing a month, making $200 for the next year. And commit to it. Or, and cool, or okay, I'm gonna commit to transitioning out. And what does that look like? Uh, so I'm gonna check in on you and uh,

• 1:55:32Ali Abdaal?

  Fantastic.

• 1:55:32Lewis Howes?

  And make sure that you're, you're holding yourself accountable as well to either going either yes to it or you're moving out of it.

• 1:55:42Lewis Howes?

  I want to acknowledge you for Ali, for, for showing up the way you do. I think it's, it takes a lot of courage to take on a career of eight years of being in the medical world and be a doctor while also building up side passions and side incomes and uh, you know, creating all these projects on the side to do things that you're also interested in. Not limiting yourself just to one thing of like, okay, I've got to be this medical doctor and this is the way, the process and the way. But let me explore this thing and let me help people this way and let me try this thing, let me try this thing. It sounds like you did many things for many years that didn't work out, but they gave you the skills, the strategies, the the experience to make these things work out for you.

• 1:56:21Lewis Howes?

  So I want to acknowledge you for showing up for yourself, doing things that you've been inspired by, coming from a place of creativity, of thoughtfulness, of analysis and then executing to help others. It's been inspiring to watch your journey and I'm grateful to have you on this, uh, this show and and hopefully we can have you back on in the future sometime when you're back, when you're in LA someday. When you're not, when you're not in your full-time, part-time job and you can travel more.

• 1:56:46Ali Abdaal?

  Amazing. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

• 1:56:48Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:56:49Ali Abdaal?

  It's been an absolute pleasure. And yeah, thank you so much for the, the therapy slash coaching session that we had. I think that's genuinely like thrown me for one and I'm going to be thinking about that over the next few days. And yeah, I will get, get back to you with a decision one way or another. Yeah. Because you're right. Like being in limbo and not really deciding, I'm not really, I'm not really putting my heart into anything I'm doing because I'm in this limbo mode.

• 1:57:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And I don't want you to think for five to 15 minutes every day, should I do this? Either commit to doing it for the way it is right now, and then you can reassess it later in a year or something, or commit to not doing it in either way. But give yourself that freedom of thought. And I think that'll support you in, in either direction, whatever you want to do. My final question for you, Ali, is what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:57:34Ali Abdaal?

  I think my definition of greatness is

• 1:57:40Ali Abdaal?

  living a life where, where

• 1:57:45Ali Abdaal?

  impacting people in our own way, working with others and enjoying the journey along the way. I think, yeah, if I can do that, I think that'll be pretty great.

• 1:57:54Lewis Howes?

  My man, Ali, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:57:57Ali Abdaal?

  Thanks for having me on. It's been a real pleasure. It's been a real pleasure.

• 1:57:59Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this, please share it. And also leave us a review of the part you enjoyed the most, or the section of this interview that you got the most out of it, or that really inspired you to think differently. And what did you think about the coaching part? Did that support you? If so, let me know. You can tag me over on social media, at Lewis Howes everywhere. And also subscribe over on Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review there and make sure to subscribe over on our YouTube channel as well for long form video content there. And I want to leave you with a reminder today that if no one has told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And I hope you remember this. I hope you come back here every week. You're listening to the show and you're remembering this as you continue to learn, as you continue to develop

• 1:58:42Lewis Howes?

  and build yourself and build the wealth of information that we have here available on the School of Greatness. Because you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.