DDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal
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Season 3 Round Up15 September 2022

Lessons in Happiness, Side Hustles, Self-Care, Productivity, Luck and Business - Season 3 Round Up

5Frameworks
14Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 1

Myth Buster18:30

Self-care isn't always running a bath — sometimes it's meeting the deadline

“sometimes self-care is working harder because you're currently not working in line with what you want to make happen”

Guest · 19:00

“I refuse to believe that self-care is running a bath”

Guest · 19:30

Hot Take· 3

Hot Take09:00

The modern world got it backwards: success does not lead to happiness

“your mom told you success is more important than happiness go thrive in life success leads to happiness”

Guest · 09:00

“success doesn't always lead to happiness”

Guest · 09:30
Hot Take11:00

Side hustles aren't toxic — the way they're marketed is

“I think that it can both be true that you can make lots through that and create a great life for yourself through that”

Guest · 11:30

“I think that it's marketed very toxically”

Guest · 12:30
Hot Take45:00

Why he won't go all-in on TikTok despite a 35-million-view clip

“when I'm going to search for the new iPhone comes out where do I go look for that video I go to YouTube dot com”

Guest · 45:30

“if I wanted the eyeballs I would be all over Tick Tock”

Guest · 46:00

Explainer· 4

Explainer00:30

Your brain is a survival machine that defaults to hunting for what's wrong

“if you leave it uncontrolled its tendency its instinct is to look for what's wrong”

Guest · 00:30

“it is there for the simple reason of detecting if there is a tiger so it can protect you”

Guest · 01:00
Explainer02:00

Ask for nine other good things when your brain flags a problem

“the Baseline of life is okay”

Guest · 02:00

“I ask for nine other good things about the situation”

Guest · 02:30
Explainer16:30

Why most productivity and wellbeing books stop working after two weeks

“you get really inspired by and stick to for about two weeks after and then you're like you completely burn out because it's not sustainable”

Guest · 17:00

“the whole idea was to create a productivity blueprint for this generation that actually acknowledged the reality of social media the 24-hour news cycle”

Guest · 17:30
Explainer35:00

How you actually run a controlled experiment on something like luck

“in our studies we would take groups of people that didn't consider themselves lucky or unlucky we'd ask them to do something”

Guest · 35:00

“we often have a third Group which is that we say here's a lucky mascot or a lucky charm carry that”

Guest · 35:30

Story· 3

Story10:00

Asking doctors whether they'd still practise medicine if they won the lottery

“would you still do medicine and half of them were like I would quit immediately and the other half were like I'd go part-time”

Ali Abdaal · 10:30

“I want to be able to do medicine for fun and I want to have enough streams of passive income on the side”

Ali Abdaal · 10:30
Story30:00

How one interviewee's stray comment turned luck into a research career

“this guy came in and just described himself as really lucky he said I got this chance occurrences they always work out for me”

Guest · 30:00

“once you lock into that the problem is you then miss opportunities or other ways of thinking and doing”

Guest · 30:30
Story38:00

The banknote in the corridor: lucky people spotted it, unlucky people didn't

“and so the question is did they spot it and the lucky people tended to spot it in The Unlucky ones didn't”

Guest · 38:00

“the study was finished there is no interview it was just whether you spotted the five or ten pound note”

Guest · 38:30

Q&A· 1

Q&A06:30

Does this mean we should just have low expectations for everything?

“does that therefore mean that we should just have low expectations for everything in life”

Ali Abdaal · 06:30

“if your Target in life is to be happy yeah okay honestly then yeah lower expectations will make you happier”

Guest · 07:00

Takeaway· 2

Takeaway39:30

Luck compounds socially: self-perception changes how others treat you

“so we forget that we give off a certain you know self identity Vibe”

Guest · 39:30

“the lucky people tended to be happier they had a bigger social network which meant they got more opportunities”

Guest · 40:00
Takeaway46:30

Selling is the meta-skill nobody teaches you, in any career

“the number one skill that helped me be a straw founder especially in the early days of building our business is the ability to sell”

Guest · 46:30

“you find yourself selling yourself far more times than you realize”

Guest · 47:00